Challenge
Knowing there was a high demand for tattoo removal services, Ray Studios opened its Paris studio in January 2022 before expanding across France, Spain, and Belgium later that year. It had to quickly start taking payments in an easy way for the team to manage, and it also needed to be able to keep track of business development.
In France, tattoo removal is listed as a medical procedure, which means there are separate payment protocols for the doctors and staff. Ray Studios looked for a solution to evenly split payments at the time of the transaction.
The Ray Studios team was also seeking a way to support online and delayed payments from customers and to easily monitor these payments afterward.
Solution
In October 2021, Stripe suggested to Ray Studios that Square1 could help find a solution that would make accepting payments as straightforward as possible. Square1 took on the challenge and implemented Stripe Payments within a single week. It also trained the studio team to use Stripe Terminal and provided a workshop for the back-office team on the reporting capabilities of the Stripe Dashboard to gain visibility into business performance. Once the testing was complete and the team was comfortable using the system in their own environment, they were ready to go.
It was at that point that an unforeseen use case arose: Ray Studios needed a way to reach out to customers who had forgotten their credit card or who were experiencing payment problems, so that they could pay later remotely rather than having to come back in the same day.
With the addition of low-code tools on top of the traditional API-driven development to customise Stripe's extensive toolbox, Square1 was able to extend the in-clinic application to allow staff to generate customised payment links to send to these customers. With the combination of Stripe products available, this was a two- to three-day turnaround.
The lightweight application built by Square1 on top of Stripe Terminal allows the in-clinic staff to process payments for customers on- and off-site, and add additional context useful for reporting, such as customer contact details.
The ability to generate payment links also addressed another issue around customers failing to attend booked appointments. Stripe was able to give Ray studios a solution by providing payment links for no-shows to cover the cost of missed appointments.
Results
Ray Studios has grown quickly each month since the Stripe implementation. The simplicity of its in-house tool allows staff to effortlessly process payments within the clinic, while the powerful reporting and customer service tools allow it to monitor business growth and keep customers happy. For Ray studios, the most notable benefit is the amount of processing time saved for the team.
Moving to omnichannel payments has also made an impact. Both customers and staff benefit from a more flexible payment process, which allows funds to flow much faster, ultimately saving up to two working days per month.
Splitting payments at the source between doctors and staff was the perfect solution for Ray Studios to operate smoothly in compliance with French regulations.
Having a user experience that is both fast and engaging is helping Ray Studios retain customers – while missed appointments are also generating additional revenue.
Ray Studios is now planning to open new locations in France and abroad. The next phase is to move its custom app to the cloud to make it available from each studio, rather than having to manually install it on a laptop at each location. Stripe Connect will then be used to onboard all practitioners in automatic registration, ensuring that Ray Studios’ finances continue to flow smoothly.
It’s impressive how Stripe has been a game changer for us in solving these payment complications due to French regulations. And I think that you can really see how Stripe can solve problems like that.
About Partner
Square1 is an award-winning creative web and mobile software development company with offices in Ireland, France and Spain, and the first agency listed in the Stripe Partner Program. Providing consultative and integration support for businesses looking to update their payment experience, Square1 identifies the right mix of Stripe products to use, supporting an existing development team or doing full “hands on keyboard” development. It has helped over 120 Stripe users to date.
Stripe has so many options that we can almost use like building blocks to deliver exactly what is needed for end users like Ray Studios. We can take a block out of the wall and replace it with another one a little further down the line. Stripe gives us the option to combine them in whatever way we need to.
