A patient tapping a card on the clinic website should not be paying Smart Clinic.
Until this drop, that is what happened. One platform merchant account took every card. The clinic waited to be settled out of band. InstaPay proofs only worked on an invoice that already existed. The store redirected to card checkout and nothing else. A booking request took a name and a slot, and no money.
The dated changelog is on What’s new. The evergreen page is Accounting & Finance. Selling on the clinic domain is still the online-store drop — this release is how that checkout, and every other surface, actually collects.
Connect the clinic, then forget the platform wallet
Online payments now holds the clinic’s Paymob or Tap keys. A probe checks them before you go live. Staff see that a secret is saved, not the secret. Paymob remains the Egypt path, including wallets and buy-now-pay-later your merchant account already enables. Tap is the second processor, for a clinic that needs a Gulf-ready card rail.
If you never paste those keys, nothing breaks. Fallback is permanent, not a migration deadline.
Four doors, one list
Configure methods once. A hosted checkout for cards. A receipt into the same review queue for InstaPay, Vodafone Cash, or a bank transfer. Cash on delivery and pay-at-pickup on the store, settled from the sales list you already open.
That list is what the patient sees on:
- the visit invoice
- store checkout
- a payment link you copy, QR, or send on WhatsApp — remaining balance, or any amount, including an amount the payer types
- an optional deposit on the website booking form
Approve a store receipt and the order, the stock, and the invoice move together. That used to be true only for a card callback. Guests are first-class; they do not need a patient file to finish.
The Website Builder store is still a switch. What changed is the till: card is no longer the only way through checkout.
Hold money at the request, not after the visit
A booking deposit is off until you turn it on. Fixed amount, a percent of the priced services, or the full price. The guest pays before you accept. When you accept, the payment applies to the visit invoice and the card reference stays with it — the same reference finance will see on a settlement file.
Decline follows the clinic’s rule, with the disclosure on the form. A clinic that wants walk-in requests with no money attached changes nothing.
Give the money back, then prove it
A refund now calls Paymob or Tap so the card is credited, not only the clinic ledger. Gateway fees can post as an ordinary expense. Paste a day’s settlement file and match what the provider paid you against what you recorded. Reports show which methods actually collected, and how many booking deposits became accepted visits.
Shift closing, treasuries, doctor commission, and optional double-entry were already in this module. They were starved of anything that was not a front-desk cash drawer. That is the part that changed.
The practical result is a clinic that can send “pay this” on WhatsApp at 9 p.m., take a deposit on a Friday booking, sell a bottle with InstaPay, and still close Saturday’s shift against the same treasuries — with the money already in the merchant account the clinic owns.
