Just what the doctor ordered. That would be Bank of America’s just announced acquisition of Axia Technologies. Also known as AxiaMed, the firm partners with independent software vendors (ISVs) with a SaaS product called Payment Fusion that focuses on the healthcare sector.
This solution provides an integrated payments platform for healthcare providers both at point of care as well as online. The healthcare industry has been a laggard in payment advancements, especially online and mobile. It does have challenges related to electronic health records (EHR) privacy and security that are now being addressed.
The bigger picture is that healthcare offers a large addressable market for payments players, and Bank of America has a key solutions provider to add to its merchant services business.
The following excerpt from a Bloomberg article reports more on the topic:
Bank of America Corp. acquired the health-care technology company Axia Technologies Inc. as the financial giant continues to build out its products for helping merchants take payments. The deal for the startup, which does business as AxiaMed, comes on the heels of the bank’s decision to dissolve its merchant-services joint venture in favor of building a proprietary platform, Bank of America said Friday in a statement. Terms weren’t disclosed.
“Health care is super important to the bank,” Mark Monaco, head of enterprise payments at Bank of America, said in an interview. “What the AxiaMed acquisition does is really accelerate our road map within the health-care vertical.”
Bank of America opted to dissolve its longtime joint venture with Fiserv Inc.’s First Data last year. Since then, the bank has been building its own platform, which it says uses real-time payments and other digital technologies.
Friday’s deal “further demonstrates the bank’s commitment to payments and the commitment to building a top-flight merchant-services offering for our clients,” Monaco said. “It’s another step in the journey.”
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group