A company that bills itself as a Buy Now, Pay Later service for the healthcare industry has announced that it has raised $110 million in Series A financing to help it add more staff and expand into new territories across the United States.
Walnut bills itself as making healthcare more affordable by allowing patients to spread payments out over time, without any fees or interest. It is currently working with about 50 different providers in different healthcare specialty fields, such as dermatologists, orthodontists, and fertility doctors.
The plan is to triple the number of employees at the company from its current total of 15 by the end of 2022. It says it is working with “thousands” of patients and the company’s revenue has grown 50% every month for the past six months.
Walnut says it uses a machine learning algorithm that looks at “thousands of data points” to screen individuals and determine if they are eligible to receive financing from the company. The technology integrates into the provider’s checkout process, without the need for a separate app or action for the patient to take advantage of the service.
The company’s default rate — patients it finances but whom do not repay the funds — has been “better than expected” and comparable with other, established lenders. “The ability to price and assess risk is really important in a BNPL, and we consider our underwriting skill as one of our core technologies,” said Roshan Patel, one of the founders of the company, in a published report
