Sphere, VisitPay Debut Text To Pay For Healthcare

Sphere, a leader in end-to-end payment solutions, will team up with VisitPay, which works with medical patient payment and security, to improve patient payment processes.

The two entities launched on Thursday (Feb.27) a mobile payment solution called Text to Pay, which works with healthcare providers and gives them a secure way to offer and accept payment through text messages.

The app will complement existing channels and just gives patients another, possibly more convenient, method of paying their bills.

A press release calls it “essential” for any health care entity to offer electronic or mobile methods of paying, especially with the rise in high costs for health plans and co-pays. Because of that, patients have become responsible for a higher percentage of their health care bills than they once were.

And, the release adds, patients’ perceptions of their health care experiences are influenced greatly by the transparency and ease with which they can access the billing experience. Because people manage their lives via mobile phones, they expect to manage health care billing any time and anywhere, the release states.

Up to 60 percent of VisitPay logins are now made with a mobile phone, and the companies expect “rapid” adoption of the new Text to Pay app.

The demand is met by combining Sphere’s secure payments platform with VisitPay’s patient-centric approach. The app will allow patients to pay over SMS without risking sensitive data from cards or their own files, using card tokens already collected from the patients. They won’t need to download further apps and can choose to pay for single visits or multiple visits at a time, the press release states.

Payments will have automatically corresponded to the visit they were made for, and the companies promise accuracy and convenience in that respect.

Patient information and privacy have been hot topics, as many governments and businesses alike debate how the issue should be handled.