Did you know that Mercury Network offers an easy way to automatically collect payment for the appraisal from the borrower? It’s part of Mercury Network’s built-in appraisal-payment process that eliminates manual emails, avoids credit card entry mistakes, and streamlines your appraisal accounting workflow.
Soon, we'll expand this feature so lenders can use it to automate payments directly to your appraiser's checking account. You might have received questions from appraisers because we recently began asking them to enroll so they're ready to receive your payments when the time comes. In the meantime, if you're not already using the payment-automation solution available today, we highly recommend doing so because it will improve your borrower's experience and make your accounting easier. Read on to learn more about what's available now, what’s coming next, and how to answer your appraisers' questions.
Current features enable automated borrower payments
Many Mercury Network users have been automating their borrower payments for years, but for those who don’t know, here’s how it works:
When an order is placed with a payment method of Deferred CC, an email is automatically sent to the borrower requesting their payment for the appraisal. This automated email can be customized with your own messages and logo so it suits your communication style and reinforces your brand.
When the borrower clicks the Pay now link in your custom email, they’ll be taken to the secure, mobile-friendly Make a payment page to enter their own credit card information. Once submitted, the borrower will receive an invoice via email, customized with your logo and messaging.
And that’s it! You and your team can stay informed every step of the way as these payment milestones are recorded in the audit trail and notifications are triggered. The system even helps you stay on top of exceptions, like declined cards, and makes it easy to issue chargebacks and refunds.
Speed up your process
Reduce manual tasks
Increase transparency
Modernize your borrower experience
No extra cost
What’s more, you can use it whether you assign orders directly to appraisers, exclusively use AMCs, or a combination of both! This is an integral feature of Mercury Network, costs nothing extra, and setting it up is a snap. Give us a call and we’ll walk you through it… all you need is your merchant account information and logo image. To get started right now, contact your Account Manager, call Client Relations at 1-800-900-4954, or click here to schedule a Zoom call at a time that works for you.
What’s coming next?
In early 2021, Mercury Network will add the ability to deposit appraisal fees directly to appraisers’ checking accounts, creating an automated end-to-end appraisal payment solution within the platform you already use every day. This will eliminate manual checks, payment-status phone calls and emails while offering straightforward reporting for your accounting workflow.
As mentioned, we’re onboarding vendors right now so they’ll be ready to accept your payments when the service launches. By adopting the payment automation capabilities described above, you’ll be ready to take advantage of this new capability as soon as it’s available. You can learn more about these upcoming features in our FAQ. You can also find an FAQ just for appraisers here.
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