AffiniPay for Associations Allows Association Professionals to Accept Payments 85% Faster with Kenect Text-to-Pay Partnership

AUSTIN, TX (March 23, 2022) -- AffiniPay for Associations, the leading online payment solution for association professionals, has announced its partnership with Kenect, the high-growth text to pay platform allowing associations to now collect payments via text messaging. Member dues renewals can now be handled by way of texting, through this innovative integration for association professionals.

According to recent research, the use of contactless payments in the U.S. has increased 150% since March 2019. The U.S. now has the most contactless transactions of any market globally at 175 million. Additionally, it’s reported that about 66% of consumers would pay more for the convenience of a service with a mobile texting channel supporting it.

“We are excited to partner with a market leader like AffiniPay for Associations and bring a new communication tool to the association space with the added benefit of collecting payments,” said Shaun Sorensen, CEO and Co-Founder of Kenect. “We have seen a rise in the need for professionals to connect with their customers and email does not always deliver the results or the immediacy you need. Our integration will increase the tools available to associations so they can send a targeted message to their members to collect a dues payment, for example, and have the payment routed through their existing AffiniPay account.”

Both Kenect and AffiniPay for Associations platforms utilize advanced security measures and are built to meet PCI compliance standards, which allows customers to manage payments through text messaging to complete transactions. With this new partnership, AffiniPay for Associations and Kenect customers can expect:

• Faster dues collections: Recurring payments requested via text with Kenect’s platform are collected nearly 100% of the time
• Time savings: AffiniPay for Associations and Kenect will save associations’ membership and finance departments up to 40 minutes per person per day by collecting payments via text
• Member response rate: Compared to the 10% average open rate of email communication, 98% of texts are opened and 96% are read within 3 minutes

“We have seen the adoption of text communication with our legal clients as an immediate communication tool and are excited to apply those learnings in the association space”, said Janelle Benefield, Vice President of Association Payments at AffiniPay. “Member engagement and increasing dues renewal rates are the two key issues our associations are facing and we believe this could be another tool to help them communicate more effectively with their members and increase the payments they are able to collect.Our goal is to continually innovate our technology platform by diversifying payment options for our customers that increase their revenue. We understand that our payments need to be made simpler, and that’s why we are excited to bring text-to-pay payment options to our customers.”

AffiniPay continues to innovate by implementing the latest technology for contactless payments to better serve customers. This innovation includes a QR Code payment option, Card Scanner functionality to speed up member information collection, and a streamlined recurring billing process for professionals called Account Updater.

For more information about AffiniPay for Associations and Kenect, head to https://www.affinipayassociations.com/partners/.