2020: Healthcare’s Year of Digital Payments
Pymnts.com’s Karen Webster interviews Ingo Money CEO Drew Edwards about the world of instant disbursements, and whether their popularity heralds the possibility of eliminating checks in the healthcare spectrum.
Their primary conjecture: At the dawn of a new decade, healthcare stands poised to embrace digital payments.
Mr. Edwards states that when customers are given a range of choices in how they can get paid, less than 10 percent choose to be paid by check — which he called an evolution, considering that digital payments are a relatively new option.
Edwards points out the disconnect between the way consumers would like to be paid and the way businesses are actually paying them.
Ingo Money’s own findings show that checks remain “sticky” because they represent a “fallback for corporate America.”
From the summary article:
Less than 10 percent of consumers may be choosing the check, but about 40 percent of them are still being paid that way, Edwards pointed out.
That’s because paper becomes the default method of payment when something goes awry — such as when banking credentials can’t be authenticated, or identity cannot be verified.
“In our crazy banking system, you don’t actually have to prove who somebody is to put their name on a piece of paper and stick it in the mail,” he said.
While people may feel comfortable — even eager — to transfer funds and billing electronically for goods and services, privacy concerns are a significant issue when dealing with the healthcare spectrum and moving information across across RTPs or emails.
Additionally, according Instamed’s 9th Annual Trends in Healthcare Payments Report, 91% of providers still receive paper checks from one or more payers. Eliminating paper payments in 2020, whether from payers or patients, appears to be unrealistic with the industry data. However, the process of electronification of paper payments and remits still remains a high-valued, cost-efficient solution for the revenue cycle management.
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