PayZen emerges from stealth with $5 million investment to provide affordable payment plans

San Francisco-based PayZen, which pays hospitals upfront for patient invoices and offers patients zero-interest, fee-free payments, has come out of stealth with a $5 million funding round backed by Picus Capital, TWO39 Ventures, and others. It has been incubated with Viola Ventures since 2019.

As well as the funding announcement, PayZen has also confirmed deals with Revenue Cycle Management vendor RMS, as well as Vim, a digital health company that connects payers to providers at the point of care. This means that PayZen can deploy its AI technology platform across a variety of healthcare providers and thousands of patients across the country.

“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. “We’ve created a business model that does well and good, addressing the challenges experienced both by patients and hospitals when it comes to out-of-pocket expenses.”

PayZen’s model applies an embedded finance approach to healthcare to help determine a patient’s ability to pay his/her costs. The platform integrates into any hospital system and helps patients and administrators easily approve, offer 0% interest payment plans, and schedule payments online at any time.

“We are excited to be working with PayZen to offer these innovative and flexible payment plans to patients,” said Scott Thomas, CEO at RMS. “This business model takes the payment burden off of patients and the collection burden off of hospitals, so patients can focus on recovery and hospitals can focus on treating patients.”

The last year with the arrival of Covid-19 has shown how important access to healthcare is, as well as how delicate some healthcare systems can be. As the pandemic continues, hospitals risk being at the brink of financial ruin and patients are struggling to pay for out-of-pocket healthcare costs. With PayZen, the platform will help collections for hospitals by 50% and make healthcare more affordable for those who need it most.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated long-standing financial hurdles for providers,” said Oron Afek, CEO at Vim. “We are excited to partner with a company that is offering hope for progress on this critical problem for providers and the patients they serve.”

Omry Ben David, General Partner at Viola Ventures added that he believes “the $3.7 trillion 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.”

PayZen is a healthcare fintech company co-founded by Cohen, alongside Tobias Mezger and Ariel Rosenthal, who serve as COO/CFO and CTO, respectively. It aims to tackle the ‘patient payment responsibility problem’ through its AI-driven platform. Vim was founded in 2011 and helps connect the workflow at healthcare’s ‘last mile’, assisting integrated delivery systems and independent practitioners. RMS was founded in 2006 and used by 9,000 billing provider clients in acute care, revenue cycle management, dental, and pharmacy.