PayZen offers a win-win for U.S. healthcare and patients
As the COVID-19 pandemic adds millions more to the healthcare dependence list, hospitals find themselves on the brink of financial ruin, with elective treatments put on hold, and patients faulting on hospital bill payments due to growing unemployment and excessive out-of-pocket healthcare costs. Nevertheless, a new Israeli fintech startup, PayZen, wants to pay hospital bills upfront, while offering fee-free payment plans for patients.
Increase collections by 50%
The fintech firm emerges from stealth mode with $5 million in Seed funding. The investment was led by Viola Ventures, with participation from Picus Capital and TWO39 Ventures. “PayZen addresses a decades-long problem of hospital bills going unpaid due to patients’ inability to pay large lump sum medical invoices,” said PayZen CEO and co-founder, Itzik Cohen.
PayZen’s platform enables hospitals to get paid for treatment upfront. Patients enroll in the PayZen program, and are offered zero-interest payment plans. WIth 100% of patients approved, hospitals can get paid immediately, and the patients enjoy a fee-free charge that can be scheduled to their financial convenience. The platform applies an embedded finance approach to healthcare to determine a patient’s unique ability to pay. The company reports that utilizing its platform can lead healthcare centers to increase collections by 50%, while helping patients reduce the burden of healthcare costs, and improving access to healthcare.
In addition, PayZen just inked deals with RMS, a Revenue Cycle Management vendor, and Vim, a digital health company that connects payers to providers at the point of care. The partnerships have allowed PayZen to successfully deploy the AI-backed technology platform across a number of healthcare providers, reaching hundreds of hospital systems and thousands of patients across the country.
PayZen was founded in 2019 by CEO Itzik Cohen, COO/CFO Tobias Mezger, and CTO Ariel Rosenthal, and has 15 employees split between the San Francisco headquarters and Tel Aviv R&D center.
Omry Ben David, General Partner at Viola Ventures said: “The $3.7T U.S. healthcare industry is ripe to be disrupted with affordable, transparent, and inclusive patient payment plans, driven by data and AI, offering a real win-win for providers and patients, with no fine print.”
Mesh Payments brings SME financials into the 21st century
Mesh Payments, an Israeli startup innovating the corporate payments management industry, secured a $13 million funding round, led by TLV Partners. The investment also saw participation from Meron Capital, R-Squared Ventures, in addition to angel investors from the fintech sector.
COVID brought on growth
Small and medium businesses (SMEs) have had to make major adjustments due to the pandemic. On one hand, they embraced the digital transition and data-backed revolution. And yet, when it comes to corporate spend, processes are driven by corporate cards and outdated reimbursement policies, too often leading to bottlenecks, lack of visibility and oversight.
Mesh Payments technology focuses on embedding a cardless payments solution into the day-to-day organizational flow of a company. Integrating into existing organizational systems, Mesh enables full control and real-time visibility for corporate finance teams and streamlines payment activities across multiple department processes, including IT, HR, Marketing, and others. This enables organizations to better manage their corporate payments and ensure that SaaS subscriptions never disrupt operations.
Customers using Mesh can set policies, limits, automatically manage their receipts and receive real-time reports, giving them complete visibility and control over their corporate payments. Mesh issues highly controlled virtual cards with the configuration for both online and offline payments, leveraging the growing adoption of mobile wallets, such as Apple Pay, Google Wallet and more.
"Over the last few months, we have seen a 20x spike in our business. Unlike other services which position themselves as a next-gen corporate credit card, we view the challenge as a corporate payment problem and not a corporate card problem. This has impacted how we built our solution and we believe that the simplicity and security our solution offers perfectly positions Mesh to continue capturing larger pieces of the corporate payments market," said Oded Zehavi, CEO and Co-Founder of Mesh Payments.
Mesh Payments was founded in 2018 by CEO Oded Zehavi, former Director of Global Development at PayPal, and CRO at Payoneer; and CTO Eran Katoni, previously VP R&D at Gertner Israel. The company looks to leverage the new capital into strategic partnerships, as well as expand sales and marketing efforts.
