Frequently Asked Questions
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general questions
What is AdvicePay and what do you do?
AdvicePay is the payment processor built specifically for Financial Planners. AdvicePay simplifies billing by allowing for subscription billing while remaining compliant with custody regulations.
How does the trial work?
All new users are offered a 14 day free trial to try AdvicePay. At the end of the 14 day free trial period, you’ll be charged the monthly AdvicePay subscription fee and automatically continue with your AdvicePay account.
Why would I use AdvicePay over other popular payment processors?
We only serve financial planners and we are committed to a hassle-free billing experience. AdvicePay is compliant and built from the ground up to avoid custody.
What are the transaction costs on AdvicePay?
- ACH: 1.5%
- Credit Card Fee: 3.5% + $0.30/transaction
How does AdvicePay save my firm time?
- Automatic invoicing
- Automatic invoice reminders for unpaid invoices
- Advanced Payment Options – subscription payments & up-front payment in the same step
- All of your client’s billing information in conveniently located in one place
- You can easily see if client’s are registered for their AdvicePay account and what invoices are paid and unpaid
- We frequently update AdvicePay to make the user experience better for our users
Do my clients have to approve their subscription payments each month?
AdvicePay’s subscription feature is convenient for you and your clients! Once a client enters payment information and confirms a subscription, no further action is needed! Auto payments will be made every month through your client’s bank account or credit card until you or your client cancels the subscription.
How does Enterprise work?
The enterprise version of AdvicePay was built specifically to allow your firm to compliantly and efficiently manage one-time and recurring billing for multiple advisors. The enterprise login will allow you to fully control the AdvicePay system leveraging administrative level access to supervise all of your advisors.
payments
Are there any limits on the amount Advisor’s can bill their clients?
There are no limitations to how much you can process.
Which payment methods are accepted on AdvicePay?
On AdvicePay, you can accept payments made with credit cards, debit cards, and ACH that have U.S. based billing information associated with them.
transfers
How do I receive ACH and Credit Card/Debit Card payments?
All payments are automatically transferred into your bank account. ACH transactions will be deposited into your account in 7 business days. Invoices paid with credit cards and debit cards process immediately, and are deposited into your bank account within 1-2 business days.
Regardless of payment type, one deposit is made into your account per day. For example, if there are multiple payments all being transferred on the same day, you will receive one lump sum into your bank account.
compliance
How does AdvicePay avoid custody?
Unlike other payment processors, AdvicePay was built to keep advisors compliant:
- AdvicePay does not give an advisor the ability to withdraw client funds without the client’s approval.
- When an advisor requests payment from a client, the client approves or denies the payment request in the client portal.
- If it is a subscription payment, the client only has to approve the request once and the remaining payments are automatically billed, however, if an advisor makes changes to the subscription the client must approve the change. This is different than other payment processors where the advisor doesn’t need client approval to withdraw their funds.
- Advisors never see clients’ banking or credit card information because clients enter that themselves on their client portal.
What features in AdvicePay were added due to regulator concerns?
One example is that we’ve added the ability for clients to cancel subscriptions at any time.
security
How does AdvicePay keep information secure?
Here is how we keep AdvicePay safe and secure for both you and your clients:
- For payments we leverage Stripe, which is a U.S. based technology payment processor that processes billions of dollars each year. Stripe has been audited by a PCI-certified auditor and is certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1. This is the most stringent level of certification available in the payments industry. (If you’re interested in learning more, please visit https://stripe.com/docs/security/stripe.)
- We never store any of your payment information on the AdvicePay database. So, you don’t have to worry about your information being compromised.
- We only use HTTPS to provide confidentiality and integrity. HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted.