Firms that help carriers and other companies take payments online are hoping the start of the public health insurance exchanges will boost sales.
Daniel Bolger, a senior solutions consultant at ACI Worldwide Inc., a payment systems company that handles about $12 trillion in online payments throughout the world each day, talked about the market shift in a recent telephone interview.
Away from the exchanges, in the traditional insurance market, a significant number of carriers continue to lack online payment mechanisms, Bolger said.
“They’re mostly regional players, but some are bigger than you’d expect,” Bolger said.
ACI is working with either Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act exchanges or the carriers selling coverage through the PPACA exchanges in about half of the states.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is connecting users of the federal HealthCare.gov system directly with the enrollment and payment systems on exchange plan issuers’ own websites, Bolger said.
Some managers of state-based exchanges are processing payments themselves. Others are passing consumers on to the carriers’ systems.