The healthcare sector is currently captivated by the promise of artificial intelligence. However, this technological enthusiasm often obscures a more mundane but critical barrier to adoption: the user experience of paying for and accessing care. For digital health platforms to scale effectively, the industry must recognise that the “digital front door” is often locked by archaic payment processing and cumbersome onboarding workflows.
Patients are also consumers who navigate seamless digital ecosystems in every other aspect of their lives. When they encounter a health app or a telemedicine portal, they bring expectations set by fintech and e-commerce. The most sophisticated diagnostic AI becomes irrelevant if the patient abandons the journey at the payment screen because the interface is unintuitive or the transaction fails.
The friction inherent in patient onboarding is often administrative and financial rather than clinical. For private providers and digital health startups, the ability to convert a visitor into a patient hinges on how effortlessly that user can navigate the financial transaction. Yet, many platforms treat payments as an afterthought, tacking on legacy banking modules that do not communicate well with modern user interfaces. This creates a disjointed experience where a patient might book an appointment in seconds but spend minutes struggling to pay for it.
This operational gap is reflected in broader organisational readiness. Recent data indicates that only 28% of UK businesses started 2025 with good digital health, highlighting a widespread lack of infrastructure maturity. While this statistic covers various sectors, it is particularly damning for healthcare, where the stakes are higher. Smaller health tech vendors often lack the resources to build custom payment flows, relying instead on off-the-shelf solutions that may not comply with specific healthcare data standards or offer the speed modern users demand.
To solve these friction points, health tech developers should look outside their industry to sectors where transaction volume is high and user tolerance for delay is zero. Industries like entertainment, gaming, and retail have spent the last decade perfecting the art of the “one-click” interaction. In these environments, the removal of even a single form field can result in significant revenue uplift.
The disparity in user experience is stark when comparing these sectors. While a gaming platform might provide a clear guide to credit card deposits to ensure users can access services instantly, healthcare portals frequently confront patients with multi-step verification hurdles just to settle a copay. In healthcare, the payment process often acts as a gatekeeper, halting the user’s progress until bureaucratic requirements are met.
Security is often cited as the primary reason for complex onboarding flows in healthcare. Protecting patient data is non-negotiable, but modern fintech has demonstrated that high security does not require high friction. Biometric authentication, tokenisation, and banking APIs allow for robust protection without forcing users to navigate endless forms.
The infrastructure landscape in the UK is notoriously disjointed. Current analysis shows that England currently navigates 21 different EPR vendors across 214 trusts, creating a fragmented environment where interoperability is a constant struggle. When a payment system cannot easily “talk” to an Electronic Patient Record (EPR), manual reconciliation is required. A seamless payment often requires a seamless flow of data, and without interoperability, the financial transaction remains isolated from the clinical journey.
This fragmentation also impacts scalability. A digital health startup might perfect its payment flow for one NHS trust or private hospital group, only to find that the solution is incompatible with the next partner’s legacy systems. This forces companies to maintain multiple versions of their onboarding workflows, diverting resources away from innovation and towards maintenance. True accessibility requires a unified approach where payment gateways are agnostic to the underlying clinical record systems.
As the market matures, the distinction between health tech and fintech will blur. Investors are already recognising that clinical efficacy alone is not enough to drive adoption; the business model must facilitate easy revenue capture. This is driving a wave of consolidation and partnership where payment processors and health platforms are integrating more deeply than ever before.
The economic incentives for this convergence are substantial. With the UK digital health market projected to reach US$37.6 billion by 2033, the potential revenue available to platforms that solve the payment puzzle is immense. We are moving towards a future where payment is embedded directly into the care pathway, where a consultation fee is settled automatically upon booking, or where insurance reimbursement happens in real-time during the appointment.
Ultimately, the goal of digital health is to improve outcomes by making care more accessible. While AI will undoubtedly play a massive role in diagnosis and treatment, it is the unglamorous work of payment processing and user onboarding that will determine which platforms actually reach patients. Reducing financial friction is not just a commercial necessity; it is a clinical imperative to ensure that technology widens access to care rather than creating new barriers.
