Good call out re payment sources – checks vs ach. When I moved from agency to media operator I was blown away by how many clients pay by check including all the big agencies. We were living in this bizarre universe from 30 years ago where we’d listen for the mail guy every day and yell out “Yahtzee!” If we got that precious envelope that we knew had a check inside. When I started to notice we received the check about 2 weeks later than the date on the check I asked our finance and operations team if there is a better way to do this on that we get paid faster and streamline our cash flow.

Turns out all we had to do was ask to see a change! We simply raised our hand and asked the question of our agency partners if we could transition to payment via ACH. Nearly every one of them said yes! It took some paperwork to get there but we’ve transitioned nearly 90% of our payments to ACH. Acouple agencies pay by virtual credit card which is a minor hit to the margin when we account for the merchant fee from Chase. And strangely, one of the largest HoldCos said they only do ACH for global and continue to send us checks.

Additionally for our local / regional clients we include a bill pay feature on our quickbooks invoice, albeit again having to pay a couple percentage points processing fees for the convenience of a smoother payout process.

Grant Leschin of Marin Ventures Outdoor says most companies still want to use checks

Our process has been to include a MV Outdoor Electronic Payment FAQ with a signed contract outlining our accepted payment methods….ACH, CC, Venmo and Zelle.   Based on our experience most companies regardless of size still prefer to use paper checks…even when we indicate in our contract that we don’t accept paper checks anymore. Larger agencies and some financial institutions pay us via ACH. No one uses PayPal anymore in our experience. We haven’t had much uptake on the CC side either….but we’re also not fond of paying the CC fees.

Ideally we would like to eliminate the entire check processing…it’s not efficient, subject to delays in bank processing, fraud and seems very antiquated in today’s world. We’d also prefer not to have to check the mailbox regularly…Our real estate company has been able to switch to entirely electronic payment via Zelle and ACH…both receiving and paying almost all electronically…certainly we should be able to do the same thing with the OOH company.   Perhaps there’s a way to incentivize the existing clients to have them make the switch…discount on the next install and production?

Circle City Outdoor Minnesota Manager Duane Fredrickson sees increased use of credit cards by younger clients.

My out of home company takes credit card, bank ACH and PayPal, in addition to checks.  Those are the default QuickBooks options. Credit card seems to be the most favored form of payment. Younger clients want to give us a credit card and have their monthly payment automatically charged every month. They don’t want to mess around with writting checks.    Older clients, government institutions and ad agencies seem to want to do checks.  None uses PayPal.  Not sure why.

What have you done to encourage electronic payments?  Email davewestburg@billboardinsider.com and we’ll run a followup post.

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