Rectangle Health Outage Offers Rare Negotiating Opportunity

• Rectangle Health has been down since February 6th, affecting all payment processing systems.
• The outage stems from a ransomware attack on BridgePay’s gateway services.
• Rectangle is offering customers a virtual terminal as a temporary workaround.
• Now is the best time to re-negotiate your rates, as Rectangle does not want to lose your business. 

Tomorrow marks one week since we first caught wind of Rectangle Health’s payment processing outage. And if you told me last Friday that payment gateways would STILL be down six days later, I’d be shocked.

While temporary outages can happen in payment processing. Week-long outages are extremely rare.

This is not normal. 

Dental practices, DSOs, and healthcare companies of all sizes have been unable to accept card payments all week, leaving millions of dollars on the table and creating back-office nightmares.

While it’s perfectly understandable to be frustrated (even furious), there’s a silver lining that you can use to your advantage. And this could end up saving you tens of thousands of dollars in processing fees for years to come.

How Rectangle’s Outage Presents a Golden Opportunity to Save Money on Credit Card Processing

There’s no sugar-coating the fact that this situation sucks for anyone affected by the outage. 

Not being able to process payments for a week is unacceptable. And while it’s nice that Rectangle took steps to offer a temporary virtual terminal, it doesn’t come close to making you whole for what’s happening.

Use this situation to your advantage:

• Rectangle Health does not want to lose your business.
• This gives you tremendous leverage to negotiate better rates moving forward.
• While switching providers may seem tempting, it’s probably not the best decision cost-wise. 
• You’re also entitled to credits because Rectangle failed to meet its SLA.

You Have All the Leverage for Negotiating Better Terms

Rectangle’s customer support and retention team is in scramble mode right now. 

I’m seeing people all over Facebook, Reddit, and LinkedIn saying that they’re leaving Rectangle for another provider. This is a crushing blow to Rectangle. And when the dust settles, I’m guessing they’ll have thousands of fewer accounts than they did a week ago. 

This gives you an unprecedented opportunity to leverage their desperation into cheaper processing rates for your business.

Support is backed up right now. But you can get the ball rolling now by auditing your statements and preparing your negotiation strategy. 

Don’t Rush Into Switching Providers Just Yet

We rarely (almost never) recommend switching payment processors. But even I can admit that this situation can justify looking elsewhere. 

That said, I still don’t think that’s the best option for several reasons:

• New providers know you’re stuck, and they’ll be less willing to offer competitive rates. 
• Switching now is just a short-term fix that will likely be most expensive down the road.
• If you’re fully integrated with Rectangle’s practice management solution, it could take weeks to migrate, and involves changing your entire operation.

Here’s what you can do.

Shop around for quotes elsewhere with no intention of actually switching. Then use those quotes for additional leverage when you’re negotiating with Rectangle for better rates.

And if you ultimately decide that your practice is better off with another provider, you’ll already have a headstart. 

Rectangle Owes You Money

Exhibit A of Rectangle’s Master Services Agreement clearly states that Rectangle is committed to a 99.5% uptime rate. Failure to meet this SLA entitles you to a credit.

Anything below 99.0% entitles you to a 30% credit of monthly service charges.

This is the bare minimum that Rectangle owes you defined by your contract. 

Rectangle’s uptime has dipped to 93% over the last 90 days, and it’s currently below at 56% for the month of February. 

Even if systems go back up immediately after I publish this, at best, the uptime rate would be 75% for the month of February. And I have a feeling it’s going to be much lower. 

Why is Rectangle Health Payment Processing Down?

The initial details were murky, but we’ve since learned that the outage was caused by a ransomware attack on BridgePay, which is the gateway provider that Rectangle uses to power its payment processing service. 

According to TechRadar, the US Secret Service has been brought in to help mitigate the threat and identify the attacker. 

BridgePay says that no payment data has been compromised. 

Systems Affected by the Rectangle Outage

All payment processing systems from Rectangle Health are down, including:

• BridgePayments
• Balance Collect
• Patient Express
• Integration Engine
• Recurring Payments API
• Wallet API
• PayGuardian Cloud API
• TokenPay API
• Transaction API
• Transaction Reporting API
• User/Credential Management API
• Horizon Payments

Rectangle’s TTP (Technology Partner Program) is also affected. This comes less than one year after Rectangle first announced this program.

When Will Rectangle Health Be Back Up and Running?

As of 1pm Eastern on Thursday, February 12th, there is still no ETA on when Rectangle’s payment processing systems will be fixed. 

Rectangle continues pushing out updates on its system status page about every three hours, but there’s been basically no changes over the last week. 

Using NMI Virtual Terminal With Rectangle Health to Temporarily Accept Payments

Earlier this week, Rectangle partnered with NMI Payments to provide a virtual terminal as a temporary solution for customers.

This workout allows healthcare practices to manually key in payment transactions using a web-based terminal. 

Rectangle is emailing temporary login credentials for access to this virtual terminal. 

But unfortunately, many Rectangle Clients haven’t received their email with credentials. And others who did get the email are saying that they can’t login or set their password. 

If you’ve been lucky enough to activate the NMI virtual terminal, here’s a quick YouTube video that walks you through how to actually accept card payments through this new interface. 

Rectangle also published some additional sources for temporary access, depending on what specific payment products you’re using. 

Final Thoughts

While this technically isn’t Rectangle’s fault, their customers don’t care. I think their communication could have been better throughout this outage, and passing the buck to the gateway provider isn’t a great look. 

This situation is a real eye-opener industry-wide. As more practice management solutions and third-party software providers offer integrated payments and gateways that aren’t actually handled in-house, a single outage can have a domino effect across multiple systems. 

Despite how terrible this situation has been for businesses impacted by the outage, I still don’t think I’d recommend jumping ship just yet.

Use this opportunity to negotiate better terms with Rectangle. A 30% discount for the month of February is the minimum they’re required to offer.

I’d shoot even higher and try to get locked in at a 30% discount indefinitely. Maybe they’ll meet you somewhere in the middle.

If you need help negotiating with Rectangle, just contact my team, and we’ll handle it on your behalf.