By Business & Finance 
Pictured: Ruairi Gough, Paytient Payments
Each week Business & Finance highlights an up-and-coming start-up making waves in its industry. This week we look at Paytient Payments, a Wexford-based start-up that is helping dentists and other healthcare organisations embrace digital payments.
What is it?
Paytient Payments is a Wexford-based start-up that is helping dentists and other healthcare organisations embrace digital payments. The business was founded on the Fintech pre-accelerator programme at the NDRC in October 2017, received funding from Enterprise Ireland in April 2018 and went live in December 2018.
Paytient Payments provides clinics with a simple platform enabling them to offer patients various options when paying for healthcare treatment. The platform consists of 3 core products, two of which are live right now in Ireland.
Payment Plans – Clinics can quickly set up a payment plan for patients, enabling them to pay for treatment by electronic direct debit over a specified number of months. For example a €3,000 orthodontic treatment, paid for over 15 months at €200 per month.
Membership Plans – They can integrate self-registration membership plans on the dental clinic websites, through a simple sign up button. These membership plans offer patients a defined set of dental benefits for a low monthly payment by direct debit. Similar to traditional dental or health insurance, but the payment goes directly to the clinic, rather than an insurance company.
Paytient Payments have partnered with a financially regulated bank with a presence in Ireland and the UK, who take responsibility for processing the transactions in a secure environment.
Who’s behind it?
Ruairi Gough, Paytient Payments
Paytient Payments was founded by Wexford-based entrepreneur Ruairi Gough, the founder and owner of Dental Marketing International, a specialist marketing services firm for dentists, in existence since 2011. Through working with dentists in Ireland, the UK, Germany and the USA over the last 9 years, Gough identified a clear gap in the market to help dentists bring digital payments into their business.
Already embraced by almost every other industry, healthcare is behind the curve, and needs to be brought forward into the digital payments age, moving away from cash, cards and cheques.
How is it funded?
Paytient Payments has been funded to date using personal funding along with a small grant from Enterprise Ireland. They also signed their beta clinics up to subscription based paid trials from day one, creating cashflow for the business.
Future plans?
Paytient Payments plan to launch a sterling version of the Paytient platform in the UK in Q2 2020, with some of their existing dental marketing clients. They believe there is huge potential, as over 40% (4,000) of the dental clinics in the UK have paper-based membership plans in place already.
Patient Finance, their third product, is still in development and built on the technology and opportunity offered by Open Banking (PSD2). By the end of 2020, they plan to offer patients the option to borrow the money for their healthcare treatment, from their own bank, through an online application process on the platform.
This would take place within a ten minute window, in the waiting room environment, saving time and effort for all involved, and increasing revenue and case acceptance for the clinics.
Their platform is live at www.paytientpayments.com and if there are any healthcare organisations interested in using the platform they can contact the team at hello@paytientpayments.com
