U.S. Bank Purchases Healthcare Payments Firm Salucro

U.S. Bank has acquired healthcare financial technology firm Salucro Healthcare Solutions.

The 20-year-old Arizona company, which focuses on patient payments and billing, had been a partner of Elavon, U.S. Bank’s merchant acquiring unit, while the bank had initially invested in Salucro in 2022, the bank announced Thursday (Aug. 22).

“U.S. Bank is a leader in providing banking and payments services to the healthcare industry, making it easier for providers and patients to focus on what’s most important to them,” Shailesh Kotwal, vice chair of U.S. Bank Payment Services, said in a news release. “Salucro’s robust billing and payment platform is an ideal complement to offerings we provide throughout U.S. Bank and Elavon.”

According to the release, the acquisition is part of U.S. Bank’s long history of healthcare-focused client services, working with hospital systems, insurers, medical equipment manufacturers and medical, dental and veterinary practices.

Salucro’s employees are now part of the U.S. Bank team and will integrate into Elavon, one of the world’s largest payments processing companies, the release added.

PYMNTS spoke in 2022 with Salucro’s Rebecca Truscott, the company’s senior vice president of strategy and business development, about changes in the telehealth sector.

“The pandemic really acted as kind of an accelerant to ramp up the need for telehealth payments solutions,” Truscott said at the time. “Telehealth companies have gone from just checking the box on payment integrations to having to look at how they incorporate more robust payment functionality within these telehealth platforms and how they make it work within the healthcare providers’ broader patient payments and billing ecosystems.”

Truscott explained to PYMNTS what patients are looking for when it comes to telehealth payments, why telehealth providers are struggling to meet these needs and how these problems can be fixed by using dedicated healthcare payment platforms.

Consumers want their telehealth payments to be as simple as the other payments in their lives, such as eCommerce transactions and everyday bills. Truscott said healthcare providers echo this desire because they want their customers to have seamless payment experiences.

“One thing we hear from a lot of our healthcare provider customers is that they want their patients to have a healthcare shopping experience that’s akin to what they have when they go shop on Amazon,” she said. “The ease of completing the transaction and flexibility in choice are both quite crucial.”