US Bank, Inworks Partner On Hospital Payments

U.S. Bank has teamed up with accounts payable automation firm Inworks to streamline business-to-business payments within the healthcare sector.

In a press release on Monday (June 24), the firms said their tie-up will connect hospitals and other companies in the healthcare services space with B2B payments and other financial services. U.S. Bank will lend its Virtual Pay Visa Card payments capabilities to the Inworks Intelligent Pay B2B payments platform designed for the healthcare market. The Inworks platform allows companies in the sector to submit, track and manage electronic payments to their vendors.

In a statement, Inworks CEO Don Carlson said U.S. Bank has “extensive relationships with healthcare companies” that could benefit from the accounts payable solutions offered by Inworks. “Likewise, our relationship with U.S. Bank and Visa gives current Inworks customers a trusted choice in paying suppliers,” he added.

“U.S. Bank has a long history of serving the banking and finance needs of healthcare organizations,” added U.S. Bank Corporate Payment Systems Senior Vice President Nicole Tackett in another statement. “We understand the complexity that our customers in healthcare must manage. Our goal is to make it easier for more hospitals and healthcare systems to gain the efficiency and financial benefits of electronic payments.”

FinTechs and payments innovators have flocked to the healthcare sector in areas like insurtech, patient billing and patient payments. B2B payments in the space have attracted less attention, however.

In a report published earlier this year, researchers at KLAS noted that hospitals and other companies in the healthcare field have an opportunity to move their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to the cloud to enhance back-office systems, including accounts payable and supply chain management.

In 2017, U.S. Bank struck another partnership with Amadeus, a corporate travel and expense management firm that integrated U.S. Bank’s virtual payment capabilities into the Amadeus B2B Wallet in another move to digitize corporate payments.