Category: Industry

Designing Modern Government Payment Solutions That Build Public Trust

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Key Takeaways

  • Outdated payment systems create friction that reduces compliance and undermines public trust; modern portals, channels, and UX reverse that trend.
  • Flexible options—partial, recurring, and scheduled payments—help residents stay current while reducing manual collections and exceptions.
  • Government-ready solutions like CSG Forte BillPay let agencies modernize experiences and integrate with existing systems in phases, as the city of Kinston and Lucas County did.

Residents do not wake up thinking about payment processing. They think about keeping their license current, avoiding penalties on their property tax bill, or paying a court fine on time. When those payments are hard to make, the result is more than operational pain for your office—it becomes a public trust issue.

Modern government payment solutions give treasurers, comptrollers, and finance leaders a practical way to close that gap. By making payments reliable, flexible, and secure across channels, agencies can improve compliance, reduce manual work, and increase resident confidence.

This article walks through what that looks like in practice—and how to get there without a risky, multi-year systems overhaul.

 

Why outdated payment systems erode trust and compliance

Legacy payment processes do more than slow collections. They send a message that the government is behind the times and hard to work with. That perception shows up directly in compliance and in the workload landing on your team.

Common pain points include:

  • Limited ways to pay: Many agencies still rely on mailed checks and in-person payments for major obligations like taxes and fees. Lucas County, Ohio, for example, originally accepted tax payments only by mail and in person at the Treasury department, which limited options for residents and slowed processing.
  • Clunky, abandon-prone portals: Residents often start a payment online, get stuck on an unclear step, and abandon the process—then call or show up in person instead. Internal planning work on government portals highlights “common friction points in government portals” and “UX issues that drive residents back to the counter or phone,” along with the need to measure completion and adoption rates, not just traffic.
  • One-size-fits-all, lump-sum payments: Requiring residents to pay the full amount in a single transaction can unintentionally reduce compliance. Internal guidance on recurring and partial government payments notes that one-time, lump-sum obligations create real compliance challenges, especially for households juggling variable income or multiple obligations.
  • Security worries and unclear protections: Public sector payment accounts are prime targets for fraud. A security brief for government payments points out that these systems face distinct threats, and that agencies need hardened login and account management flows, protection for stored payment methods, and effective monitoring and response processes.

If residents are not confident their data is protected, they are less likely to adopt digital channels.

Over time, these issues train residents to expect long lines, long hold times, and confusing online experiences—fueling complaints and making it harder to argue that your office is a good steward of public funds.

What Modern Government Payments Look Like

 

Support residents with flexible, accessible options

Compliance improves when you give people realistic ways to stay current. That means flexibility in both how and when they pay, without compromising policy.

Move beyond “pay in full or fall behind”: One-time, lump-sum payment requirements can create avoidable compliance challenges. In many cases, residents intend to pay but cannot absorb a large bill all at once.

Modern government payment solutions can support:

  • Partial payments within defined thresholds
  • Structured payment plans that spread obligations over time
  • Over-pay options where appropriate (for example, pre-funding certain obligations)

Modern payment platforms allow agencies to configure schedule-pay, autopay, partial pay, and over-pay options in their hosted portals, with rules controlled by the agency.

That combination makes it easier for residents to take action early instead of waiting until they can pay in full.

Make recurring and scheduled payments easy: For obligations like installment taxes, recurring fines, or ongoing program fees, recurring, and scheduled payments reduce missed due dates driven by forgetfulness or poor timing. Recurring and partial payments can be direct levers to boost compliance, especially when combined with clear communication and good reporting.

Residents appreciate the ability to enroll in autopay or set up scheduled payments aligned with their pay cycles, using stored payment methods that are captured via PCI-compliant forms and tokenized for secure storage. This reduces manual collections work while giving residents more control.

Design for accessibility and mobile use by:

  • Fixing UX issues that drive people to complain
  • Making portals accessible and mobile-friendly
  • Measuring completion and adoption rates—not just traffic

Modern government payment portals are designed to be responsive and accessible from modern browsers on phones and tablets, and to support both guest and registered flows for different comfort levels.

When residents can complete a payment on the device in their hand—in a few accessible, well-labeled steps—they are far more likely to finish the transaction instead of abandoning it.

CSG Forte offers a modern, secure platform designed specifically to help the public sector address these challenges and deliver on the promise of flexible, accessible payments. By integrating user-friendly payment options and robust security features, our bill payment and presentment solutions empower agencies to meet residents where they are—without upending existing operations or sacrificing compliance standards.

 

Integrating payments with existing government systems

Finance and IT leaders are understandably wary of any project that sounds like “rip and replace.” Fortunately, payment modernization often succeeds through incremental integration rather than all-or-nothing change. The real-world impact of this approach is evident through the experiences of local governments that have successfully modernized their payment processes with CSG Forte.

City of Kinston: bridging a gap without rebuilding everything

The city of Kinston, North Carolina, needed to expand its electronic payment options. Residents could pay utilities by phone and at a kiosk, but not online, and other departments could not accept electronic payments at all.

Instead of rebuilding its core systems, the city:

  • Used CSG Forte to build programming that bridged its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and a payment interface.
  • Implemented Secure Web Pay (SWP) Checkout to redirect residents from the city’s site to a secure, hosted payment page.
  • Added IVR and other channels over time.

The results: after integrating more electronic payment options, Kinston saw 41% year-over-year growth in transactions processed and positive feedback from residents who appreciated the ease of use.

Staff now handle less cash and fewer checks, reducing bank fees and saving time.

Lucas County: modernizing tax payments with minimal disruption

Lucas County, Ohio, worked with CSG Forte to solve a paper-heavy process where residents could only pay taxes by mail or in person. A prior processor added electronic options but came with high fees and poor support.

By transitioning to CSG Forte, the county:

  • Expanded card and eCheck options and added phone payments.
  • Streamlined online tax collection with SWP Checkout.
  • Retained its existing infrastructure, with the switch described as “pretty seamless.”

Over the first six years with CSG Forte, the Treasury department saw:

  • More than 280% growth in annual transactions processed.
  • A “vast reduction in posting issues.”
  • Fewer taxpayer complaints about the fee structure.

These examples show that you can upgrade payment experiences and back-office reliability without tearing out core systems—especially when you start with hosted front-end experiences and standard file-based integrations.

A Phased Approach to BillPay for Governments

 

Where CSG Forte fits in

Modernizing government payment solutions is not just a technology decision; it is a strategic choice about how you want residents to experience your agency.

CSG Forte’s government payments platform, anchored by BillPay and complemented by tools like Engage and Authenticate, is designed to help agencies:

  • Offer secure digital payments across channels (web, mobile, phone, IVR, and in person).
  • Provide flexible options like schedule-pay, autopay, partial pay, and over-pay where policy allows.
  • Protect constituent data with PCI-validated P2PE, tokenization, and fraud/risk tools tailored to card and ACH payments.
  • Reduce manual work with daily reporting and ready-to-reconcile files.
  • Improve collections and public experience at the same time, as shown in Kinston and Lucas County’s results.

If your team is exploring government payment solutions that can meet today’s expectations without adding unnecessary complexity, it can help to talk through options with a specialist.

Now is the time to talk to a payments expert. Our team can help you map a practical path from where you are now to a more modern, trusted payment experience for the people you serve.

 

FAQs

What is a government payment solution?

A government payment solution is a set of tools that lets agencies present bills, accept payments (card, ACH/eCheck, and often wallets) across web, mobile, IVR, and in-person channels, and reconcile those payments with existing financial systems. CSG Forte BillPay, for example, is a hosted portal purpose-built for government and other billers.

Do we need to replace our core financial or ERP system to modernize payments?

Not necessarily. Many agencies start with a hosted portal and file-based integrations, then deepen connections over time. Kinston and Lucas County both modernized tax and utility payments by bridging existing systems to CSG Forte’s hosted checkout and reporting tools, rather than rebuilding their ERPs.

How do recurring and partial payments help with compliance?

Internal government content notes that one-time, lump-sum payments can create compliance challenges, especially for residents facing variable income. Recurring and partial options make obligations more manageable, improving on-time payments when paired with clear policies and communication.

How do modern solutions address security for public sector payments?

Security briefs for public sector accounts stress the need for hardened login, account management, and data protection. CSG Forte’s platform is PCI DSS-compliant, supports PCI-validated P2PE for in-person card transactions, and uses tokenization to keep sensitive data out of agency environments.

What results have other governments seen from modernizing payments?

Lucas County increased annual transactions by more than 280% over six years while reducing posting issues and fee complaints.

Kinston saw 41% year-over-year growth in transactions after expanding electronic options, along with positive resident feedback.

From Claim to Cash: Modern Healthcare Payment Solutions for Large Health Systems

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Top Takeaways

  • Fragmented, manual payment processes slow cash, inflate cost-to-collect, and frustrate patients at a time when health system margins and workforces are under pressure.
  • Modern healthcare payment solutions combine patient-friendly, omnichannel payments with deep EHR/PM integration and strong security to improve both collections and satisfaction.
  • Straight Through Processing (STP) automates virtual card reimbursements from “approved” to “deposited + reconciled” in about a day, creating faster, more predictable revenue streams.

Hospitals and health systems are under pressure from every direction. Margins are thin, labor is tight, and more revenue depends on patients who are already stretched financially. At the same time, those patients expect to pay for care the way they pay for everything else: quickly, digitally, and on their own time.

Yet in many large health systems, the way money moves still looks like it did a decade ago: paper statements, mailed virtual cards, disconnected portals, and manual reconciliation between clinical, billing, and payment systems.

That disconnect doesn’t just create back-office headaches. It slows cash, inflates cost-to-collect, and leaves patients frustrated with a financial experience that doesn’t match the quality of care.

Modern healthcare payment solutions give administrators another option. This article explains how combining digital, patient-friendly payment options with deep integration and automation helps strengthen revenue cycle performance and improve patient satisfaction at the same time.

 

Why outdated payment processes hurt the revenue cycle

Legacy payment processes tend to break down in the same places, especially in large, multi-entity systems.

Fragmented tools and manual work inflate cost-to-collect

Many healthcare organizations upgraded payment capabilities piecemeal over time: a portal here, a card terminal there, maybe a lockbox or text-to-pay tool on top of an aging practice management system.

The result is a tangle of:

  • Different processors and gateways by facility or service line
  • Staff keying card numbers from phone calls or mailed virtual cards
  • Spreadsheets to reconcile deposits and remittance files
  • Separate workflows for online, in-person and mailed payments

This fragmentation drives up the cost-to-collect and soaks up scarce revenue cycle staff time that could be spent on denials prevention, underpayment follow-up, or complex accounts.

Slow reimbursement adds volatility you can’t afford

On the payer side, many providers still receive insurer reimbursements via mailed virtual cards. Staff open envelopes, key card numbers into terminals, and manually match deposits to remits days or weeks later.

That “digital in name only” workflow can stretch the window from approval to cash to 30–90 days.

When more revenue already depends on patient responsibility—where collection rates are lower and less predictable—those delays on the “reliable” side of the payer mix create real cash-flow risk.

Confusing, inconvenient bills damage satisfaction and collections

On the patient side, traditional payment processes often feel opaque and outdated. When consumers are confused by their medical bills or encounter problems while paying a medical bill, they’re more likely to delay payment or even allow their bill to go to collections.

That dissatisfaction shows up on your balance sheet as slower collections, more bad debt and higher churn.

 

What modern healthcare payment solutions include

Modern healthcare payment solutions support omnichannel payments, integrate with EHR and practice management systems, and use models like embedded payments and Straight Through Processing (STP) to automate both patient payments and reimbursements while maintaining HIPAA and PCI DSS compliance.

Key capabilities include:

Omnichannel, patient-centric payments

Patients should be able to pay the way that works for them, at the time that works for them. Leading platforms support:

  • Online patient portals and mobile-responsive payment pages
  • Text-to-pay links and email reminders with click-to-pay options
  • In-office terminals and contactless payments
  • Phone payments via IVR or live agents, with secure payment pages instead of card numbers read aloud
  • Paper and check workflows that are digitized quickly on the back end

The right platform lets you honor those preferences without multiplying your internal complexity.

Flexible payment options that reflect real finances

Rising deductibles means more patients are managing larger balances over time. Modern platforms support:

  • Installment plans with clear terms and automated schedules
  • Autopay for recurring balances, including cards or ACH on file
  • Digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, which many consumers find both convenient and secure
  • Multiple payment methods per account (e.g., HSA/FSA plus credit card)

Consumers increasingly expect this flexibility from their healthcare providers.

Deep integration with EHR and billing platforms

A payment that doesn’t post correctly might as well not exist. That’s why integration with electronic health records (EHR) systems, practice management (PM) software, and revenue cycle tools is non-negotiable.

Modern payment solutions integrate with leading EHR/PM systems to:

  • Match payments accurately to the right guarantor and encounter
  • Update balances in near real time across channels
  • Reduce re-keying by staff and associated error risk
  • Provide unified reporting aligned with how finance and revenue cycle teams actually work

When payments live outside core workflows, you create more manual work, more exceptions and more doubt about the numbers.

Security and compliance by design

Healthcare sits at the intersection of HIPAA, PCI DSS, and escalating cyber risk. Any payment platform supporting a health system should:

  • Minimize the environment that touches cardholder data through tokenization and encryption in transit and at rest
  • Support HIPAA-aware deployments and clear PHI handling patterns
  • Offer role-based access controls, detailed audit trails, and separation of duties
  • Provide fraud monitoring and anomaly detection on payment accounts and sessions

Well-structured platforms reduce your PCI DSS scope and centralize much of the risk and monitoring workload while clearly defining the shared responsibilities you still own around access and configuration.

 

Making it easier for patients to understand and pay

From a patient’s perspective, paying for care involves two hurdles: understanding what they owe and acting on it. Modern healthcare payment solutions are designed to reduce friction on both fronts.

Fix the bill before you fix the payment button

If patients can’t make sense of their bill, they’re far less likely to pay it. Almost 60% of patients are dissatisfied with how providers communicate healthcare costs, and 56% say understanding what they owe is stressful.

To improve clarity:

  • Present a clear summary of charges, insurance payments and patient responsibility
  • Explain deductibles, coinsurance and write-offs in plain language
  • Avoid common “billing sins” like missing due dates or unclear previous-balance logic
  • Use consistent naming for facilities, departments and providers across statements and portals

Think of each touchpoint—paper, portal, text, email—as reinforcing the same story about what is owed and why.

Offer realistic options up front

Patient-friendly payment options can improve collections without pushing people into unmanageable debt. Practical steps include:

  • Providing a good-faith estimate of out-of-pocket costs before non-emergent services, so patients can plan or discuss financing
  • Presenting multiple payment options at the first bill, including plans, autopay and digital channels
  • Making it easy to enroll in a payment plan or autopay online, without a phone call

When modern embedded payments are part of pre-service and scheduling workflows, patients know their costs and options before they sign consent forms, reducing unpleasant surprises and downstream disputes.

Reduce portal and login friction

Even the best financial communication can’t overcome a clunky portal. Common friction points include:

  • Forgotten usernames and passwords with no simple recovery path
  • Multiple logins (one for clinical data, another for billing)
  • Too many clicks between login and the payment screen
  • Poor mobile performance

Content in the healthcare cluster emphasizes streamlining the login-to-payment journey and designing mobile-first payment flows, while coordinating portal, text and statement experiences so patients encounter a coherent path to payment.

Some organizations also layer in low-friction options like secure pay-by-link experiences (sent via text or email) that don’t require portal logins for one-time payments.

 

Integrating payments with clinical and billing systems

For large health systems, the real power of modern healthcare payment solutions lies in integration and automation—connecting payments across clinical, billing and treasury workflows.

From “payments as a bolt-on” to strategic infrastructure

Historically, payment tools sat on the periphery: a standalone portal, a few terminals, a lockbox relationship. Modern platforms act more like infrastructure:

  • Embedded directly into patient portals, scheduling tools and revenue cycle systems
  • Re-using tokenized payment credentials across channels while keeping raw data out of your environment
  • Aligning reporting structures to revenue cycle KPIs such as days in A/R and patient pay yield

That shift makes it easier to maintain consistent policies and experiences across hospitals, clinics and acquired entities.

Where STP fits

STP is a specific payment automation process that helps healthcare providers receive payments from insurance companies—and patients via their payers—in about one day, directly into their bank accounts.

Instead of sending virtual card details through the mail and relying on manual posting, STP:

  • Keeps the payer’s virtual card model intact
  • Routes virtual card credentials and remittance data electronically to a healthcare-ready processor
  • Automatically processes the cards and deposits funds into the provider’s bank account, typically the day after approval rather than weeks later
  • Surfaces clean remittance data in a platform your teams can use for posting and reconciliation

In revenue cycle terms, STP closes the “last mile” from approved reimbursement to deposited, reconciled cash.

Because STP runs behind the scenes, it doesn’t require disruptive changes to your EHR or PM systems. You gain faster payments and cleaner data, while staff stop acting as human routers for virtual cards.

Bringing patient and payer flows together

Modern healthcare payment solutions can centralize:

  • B2B flows: insurer payments via virtual cards
  • C2B flows: patient payments made through payer portals (e.g., HSA/FSA cards), which also generate virtual cards to the provider

By routing both through a common platform with STP, health systems:

  • Reduce manual touchpoints on two significant revenue streams
  • Gain a more predictable, consolidated view of cash across facilities
  • Lay a stronger foundation for downstream patient billing and collections

 

Measuring impact on collections and patient experience

To earn and sustain investment in payment modernization, large systems need a clear measurement framework that connects capabilities to outcomes.

Revenue cycle and finance metrics

Common metrics to track include:

  • Days in A/R and time from adjudication to cash, especially for virtual card reimbursements
  • Patient collection rate, by channel and balance segment
  • Cost-to-collect, including payment-related call center and posting labor
  • Bad debt and charity care, particularly for self-pay after insurance
  • Exception rates for unmatched or misapplied payments
  • Reconciliation cycle time and month-end close effort

Early adopters of digital payments report better cash-flow management, lower transaction costs and reduced financial risk.

Patient experience and retention metrics

Because billing and payments heavily influence satisfaction, include:

  • Patient portal adoption and payment completion rates
  • Inbound call volume related to billing and payment confusion
  • Complaint themes in surveys or online reviews about the financial experience
  • Churn or leakage associated with negative billing experiences—some studies show a sizable share of patients will switch providers over payment friction

Tracking both financial and patient outcomes helps leaders avoid “false wins” where collections improve but satisfaction drops—and vice versa.

Security and risk indicators

As you consolidate payments and accounts, also monitor:

  • Account takeover attempts and unusual access patterns in portals
  • Chargeback and dispute trends
  • Fraud incidents related to virtual card processing or mailed remittances

Security-focused content in the healthcare cluster recommends a straightforward checklist for payment accounts: strengthening authentication, protecting stored payment methods, monitoring for suspicious activity and working closely with vendors on healthcare-specific controls.

 

Straight Through Processing as a strategic lever for large systems

For large health systems, modern healthcare payment solutions are not just a technology refresh. They’re a way to:

  • Shorten reimbursement cycles from 30–90 days to roughly one day for eligible virtual card payments
  • Reduce manual work and rework across revenue cycle, finance and lockbox operations
  • Offer patients the kind of digital experience they already expect in banking and retail
  • Strengthen your security and compliance posture across cardholder data and PHI

Straight Through Processing sits at the heart of this strategy. It turns insurer and payer-portal payments into fast, predictable, low-touch revenue—freeing your teams to focus on higher-value work and giving patients a more consistent journey from care to final payment.

If your organization is ready to move beyond piecemeal fixes and build a payment foundation that supports both your revenue cycle and your patient experience, it’s time to put STP on the roadmap.

Sign up CSG Forte’s for Straight Through Processing to see how automated, next-day reimbursements and modern payment options can support your revenue cycle performance and patient satisfaction goals.

 

FAQs

What are modern healthcare payment solutions?

Modern healthcare payment solutions are digital platforms that support omnichannel patient payments (online, mobile, text, phone and in-person), integrate with EHR and practice management systems and often use models like embedded payments and Straight Through Processing to automate collections and reimbursements while maintaining HIPAA and PCI DSS compliance.

How does Straight Through Processing (STP) help the revenue cycle?

STP routes adjudicated virtual card payments electronically from payers to providers and processes them automatically, typically shortening the time from approval to deposit from 30–90 days to about one day and delivering clean remittance data for reconciliation.

How do modern payment platforms improve patient satisfaction?

They make bills clearer, support preferred payment methods (cards, ACH, digital wallets) and channels (portal, text, phone, mail) and reduce friction in login and payment flows. Patients get transparency, choice and convenience, which research links to higher satisfaction and lower churn.

What security and compliance standards should healthcare payment solutions support?

Healthcare-ready platforms are designed to minimize cardholder data scope through tokenization and encryption, support HIPAA-aware deployments and centralize many risk and monitoring functions. Providers still retain shared responsibility for access control and PHI handling within their own systems.

How can we measure the impact of payment modernization?

Track days in A/R, time from adjudication to cash, patient collection rates, cost-to-collect, write-offs, billing-related call volume and patient satisfaction or NPS specific to billing and payments.

Fast, Invisible, Secure: 3 Payment Moves ISVs Can’t Ignore in 2026

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Key Takeaways

  • Invisible payments must also be intelligent: In 2026, leading platforms make payments feel native while quietly using data and AI to drive higher conversion, stronger loyalty, and better margins—without adding friction or complexity.
  • Compliance is the baseline; real-time risk is the differentiator: As instant payments accelerate, basic compliance isn’t enough. Winning ISVs embed always-on, AI-driven fraud and compliance controls directly into live payment flows.
  • Shared intelligence beats fighting fraud alone: Fraud moves across platforms, processors, and geographies. ISVs connected to broader risk networks gain earlier detection, fewer false positives, and safer scale.

In 2026, payments are expected to feel as fast and personal as sending a text—but the risk surface around those payments is bigger than ever. As Saurabh Joshi, CSG Forte’s executive vice president, predicts: biometric authentication, instant payment rails, and smarter embedded experiences will move from “interesting roadmap item” to table stakes.

For ISVs and platforms, that tension is the opportunity: payments can finally move from back-office plumbing to a visible growth lever that drives conversion, loyalty, and revenue, without the associated regulatory risk.

Here are three moves that will separate the platforms that win from those that lag.

1. Make payments feel invisible—and intelligent

Your customers don’t wake up wanting a “payment experience.” They want users to pay inside the product they already live in—web, mobile, IVR, even connected devices—without being bounced into a separate portal or clunky hosted page.

In 2026, “embedded” isn’t enough. Embedded insight becomes the differentiator. Leading platforms will:

  • Use AI to rank and recommend the optimal payment method in real time, based on rewards, timing, fees, and affordability.
  • Automatically surface the best card, “pay later,” or account-to-account option when funds are tight or cash flow is critical.
  • Extend this intelligence into physical environments, where cars and connected devices pay automatically at tolls, fuel pumps, and drive-thrus—while the experience still lives inside your product’s UI.

Done right, this unlocks new revenue via:

  • Higher conversion, because paying feels like a natural step in the workflow, not a separate chore.
  • Better margin management, powered by intelligent routing and method steering behind the scenes.
  • Stickier platforms, because you own the end-to-end payment UX instead of handing it off to someone else’s page.

The catch: if you try to assemble this with a different provider for every payment method, geography, and “pay with X” trend, you inherit all the complexity and data sprawl yourself.

That’s why CSG Forte advocates a single payments hub and Payment Facilitation-as-a-Service (PFaaS) model—one orchestration layer for cards, ACH, wallets, BillPay, and omnichannel experiences, plus unified analytics for routing and fee strategy, instead of a patchwork of gateways and point solutions.

2. Upgrade from “check-the-box” compliance to always-on protection

As instant payments move from optional to essential in the U.S., fraud is moving just as fast. Regulatory expectations are shifting from “reasonable controls” to real-time, data-driven protection, and basic compliance increasingly gives a false sense of security.

For platforms, the risk is clear:

  • Fraudsters iterate faster than regulation.
  • Waiting for mandates leaves you exposed to reputational and financial damage if your brand becomes the cautionary headline.
  • Your customers expect you to protect both their information and shared cash flow, not just pass an annual audit.

As Jeanette Mbungo, CSG Forte’s chief operating officer, notes: in the fight against payment fraud, basic compliance is not good enough. Processors and platforms that win will:

  • Embed AI-driven, proactive risk management into live payment flows, using industry-specific fraud signals and predictive analytics to catch issues before they settle.
  • Add real-time compliance checks instead of relying only on batch reviews and manual queues.
  • Tighten controls while reducing false positives, so you stop fraud, not business.

From a product standpoint, that means investing in:

  • P2PE devices and secure edge hardware to harden card-present flows.
  • Tokenization across payment methods to minimize sensitive data in motion.
  • Agentic, AI-assisted compliance that continually learns from new behaviors, instead of bolt-on tools that only react after the fact.

For ISVs and platforms, the practical takeaway is simple: payment flows, fraud controls, and compliance checks must evolve together.

If your fraud logic lives in a different universe from how you route, settle, and report payments, you’ll either lose good customers to over-declines—or get surprised by losses when fraud moves faster than your controls.

 

3. Plug into a risk network instead of fighting fraud alone

Fraud doesn’t care whose logo is on the checkout button. Patterns jump between processors, platforms, and geographies, and isolation makes everyone easier to exploit.

Across the industry, we’re seeing a shift from competitors to collaborators. Payments companies are merging, partnering, and leveraging each other’s technology to build infrastructure, innovate, and scale faster. For ISVs and platforms, that collaboration matters most in risk:

  • Shared fraud pattern intelligence helps you spot emerging scams and synthetic identities before they hit your portfolio.
  • “Co-opetition” lets providers collaborate on risk while still competing on experience and value, so your merchants benefit from the data of the whole network, not just your own corner of it.
  • Broader collaboration translates into wider geographic reach and accelerated growth without a proportional jump in fraud exposure.

CSG Forte’s stance is to:

  • Lower both fraud losses and false positives, so you don’t have to choose between safety and conversion.
  • Offer AI-driven protection with adaptive rules and cross-channel monitoring, pairing SaaS technology with deep payments and risk expertise from leaders like Saurabh and Jeanette.
  • Detect patterns early and share learnings across clients, so no one fights alone.

If you’re building or scaling a platform in 2026, that’s your decision point: do you want to be one more isolated endpoint fraudsters can probe, or part of a network where every attack makes the whole ecosystem smarter?

The bottom line for ISVs and platforms

“Good enough” payments are long gone in 2026. Your customers now expect fast, invisible, secure experiences their users barely notice — but they’ll absolutely notice if something goes wrong.

To stay ahead:

  • Make payments feel native and intelligent inside your product.
  • Treat compliance as a live, AI-powered control system, not a checklist.
  • Join an ecosystem that shares fraud intelligence and embedded insight, turning payments into a growth lever, not a drag.

Platforms that do all three won’t just keep up with the payments space in 2026. They’ll turn it into a durable competitive advantage, backed by the vision of Forte leaders who see where payments are headed next.

Ready to learn more? Contact one of our payments experts today to learn how CSG Forte can help your business stay ahead of what’s next, in 2026 and beyond.

Frequently asked questions

  1. What is the main takeaway from these 2026 payment predictions for ISVs and platforms?
    The big shift is that payments are no longer just “back-office plumbing.” In 2026, your customers will expect payment experiences that are fast, invisible and secure—embedded directly in your product. ISVs that treat payments as a strategic growth lever (with embedded insight, instant rails and stronger fraud controls) will outperform those that treat them as a basic utility.
  2. What does it mean to make payments “invisible” inside my platform?
    “Invisible” payments are deeply embedded into your product so users can pay or get paid without redirects, extra logins or clunky hosted pages. The next step is embedded insight, where your platform also uses AI and data to recommend the best payment method, improve authorization rates and manage fees behind the scenes—without adding friction for users.
  3. Why are instant payments such a big deal, and what risks do they introduce?
    Instant payments improve cash flow, reconciliation and user satisfaction—but they also move risk faster. Fraud, operational errors and disputes can settle before traditional controls catch them. That’s why instant payment strategies must include real-time fraud monitoring, smarter compliance checks and clear operational playbooks for exceptions and disputes.

Embedded Payments for Fintech: Designing Account Flows That Resist ATO

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Key Takeaways

  • Embedded payments turn account creation, login and payout-account changes into critical fraud-control surfaces that must be designed with account takeover (ATO) in mind.
  • Context-aware friction protects embedded payment flows without derailing everyday use for good customers.
  • PFaaS and Registered Payment Facilitation give you more control over embedded payment UX and economics, but they also raise expectations for coordinated ATO controls and lifecycle monitoring.

If you build a fintech or software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform with embedded payments, your login page is no longer “just” an auth screen. It is the front door to money movement.

When customers onboard, accept payments, manage payouts and reconcile inside your app, every account becomes more valuable—and more attractive to attackers. In that world, weak account creation, login and account management flows turn into the easiest path to account takeover (ATO), payout diversion and refund abuse.

Most teams know they should care about ATO. Fewer connect it directly to product decisions they make every day: which fields to collect at signup, when to require step-up authentication, how to handle payout changes, or what happens after a password reset.

This article is meant to help professionals design fraud-resistant embedded payment experiences within Payment Facilitation-as-a-Service (PFaaS) or Registered Payment Facilitation models, as well as for referral and reseller partnership agreements.

In it, we’ll examine practical approaches to account creation, login and account management processes that help mitigate ATO risk while maintaining a smooth user experience.

 

Why ATO is a first-order risk in embedded payments for fintechs

Embedded payments weave payment capabilities directly into your platform, allowing users to pay—or get paid—without being redirected to a third-party portal.

Instead of opening a separate merchant account and logging into a different gateway, your users sign up, accept payments and see reporting without leaving your branded platform.

This feature is great for growth and retention. It is also why your account system becomes a high-value target:

  • A compromised account can change stored payment details, reroute payouts, enroll new payment methods or set up recurring charges that look legitimate on paper.
  • Attackers do not need to break your infrastructure; they can “walk in” with stolen or phished credentials, then operate as if they were a normal user.
  • In PFaaS and Registered Payment Facilitation models, your flows are tightly linked to compliance expectations for KYC/KYB, AML, Nacha, PCI and ongoing monitoring.

The net: in embedded payments, account creation, login, password resets and payout-account changes are not generic UX—they are fraud-control surface area.

Know Your Embedded Payments Model

 

Reduce friction for good users, add context-aware friction for risk

High-performing platforms design onboarding, payment and account flows that reduce friction while baking in fraud controls and regulatory requirements from the start.

The core pattern is simple:

  • Keep low-risk, everyday actions fast.
  • Add step-up verification and additional checks at truly high-risk moments (new devices, unusual IP, large payouts, bank-account changes).

You are not trying to make every login painful. You are trying to align friction with financial and compliance risk.

 

Designing ATO-resistant account management

This is where ATO turns into actual financial and compliance exposure. Several steps in the embedded payment process, including account creation, login, password resets, and payout-account changes, are prime targets for ATO and should be treated as a fraud-control surface.

1. Put your strongest controls on payout-account and banking changes

Payout and bank-account changes are among the highest-risk actions in any embedded payments program.

Practical safeguards supported across CSG content include:

  • Require MFA or out-of-band verification before:
    • Adding or changing payout bank accounts
    • Changing the destination for large or unusual refunds
  • Consider cooling-off periods (e.g., a new payout account cannot receive funds for 24–48 hours), giving you time to detect anomalies.
  • Bind refunds to the original payment method where feasible; limit scenarios where funds can be redirected to a new destination through self-service alone.

For ACH, Nacha guidance emphasizes account validation at first use and on change, as part of a “commercially reasonable fraudulent transaction detection system” for online debits.

In practice, that means integrating account validation when merchants add or update bank accounts, not after the first failed debit [needs internal validation for specific tooling].

2. Monitor lifecycle and behavior, not just individual events

Lifecycle monitoring—tracking behavioral signals over time—is one of the most effective ways to catch ATO patterns that look innocuous in isolation.

Signals to track:

  • Device changes: new device + sensitive action within a short window
  • Password reset patterns: frequent resets followed by payment-method or payout-account updates
  • Geo/IP shifts: new IP geographies combined with large refunds or payout increases
  • Portfolio velocity: many accounts changing contact or payout info from the same IP or network

Responses to automate:

  • Step-up challenges (MFA, additional verification) when risk thresholds are met
  • Temporary holds on new payout destinations until review is complete
  • Case creation for risk teams where patterns match known fraud typologies

Back-office metrics matter too. High-performing organizations track ATO incidents, password reset volume, ACH return rates and refund patterns—not just card decline and chargeback rates.

3. Coordinate your controls with your PFaaS or PayFac partner

In PFaaS and Registered Payment Facilitation models, your provider’s risk and compliance stack is a critical extension of your own.

Coordinated controls make both sides more effective:

  • Align risk taxonomies (what counts as “suspicious,” “high-risk,” “blocked”) so your internal flags can map cleanly to provider actions.
  • Implement real-time signaling so your app can tell the provider when to:
    • Pause payouts or refunds for a given merchant
    • Apply stricter velocity or amount limits
    • Trigger additional KYC/KYB or documentation requests
  • Agree on escalation flows: who can override blocks, what evidence is needed, how sponsor banks are informed when serious events occur.

This partnership is especially important for ACH, where Nacha rules around Third-Party Service Providers and Third-Party Senders, and emerging fraud-monitoring obligations, increase expectations for risk-based monitoring across all parties handling payments.

 

Where an embedded payments partner fits

You do not have to solve all of this alone.

An experienced embedded payments partner can:

  • Provide PCI-compliant infrastructure, tokenization and risk tooling so less sensitive data lives in your environment.
  • Handle much of the day-to-day underwriting, monitoring and scheme-level compliance in PFaaS and Registered Payment Facilitation models—while collaborating with you on risk policies.
  • Offer flexible partnership models—referral, reseller, PFaaS, Registered Payment Facilitation—so you can start where you are and grow into deeper ownership as your business and compliance capabilities mature.

The fintech platforms that win with embedded payments will not be the ones that ignore risk, nor the ones that drown users in friction. They will be the ones that design payments as a growth engine and an ATO-resistant control program at the same time—from the very first “Create account” screen.

 

CSG Forte: Your Trusted Embedded Payments Partner

CSG Forte brings decades of payments expertise to help businesses navigate risk and growth in the embedded payments landscape.

As a leader in secure, scalable payment solutions, CSG Forte combines advanced fraud prevention, real-time account validation and robust compliance controls with a flexible platform that grows with your needs.

Whether you’re just starting with payments integration or expanding your facilitation model, CSG Forte partners with you to deliver seamless payments experiences—without compromising on security or compliance.

Ready to turn embedded payments into a growth engine—without opening the door to account takeover fraud? Explore how to harden your defenses in our handy guide, Account Takeover Fraud: Building a FORTE Defense. Then see how you can scale and monetize payments safely with Embedded Payments for ISVs: How to Monetize Payments Without the Risk.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of tools do we need beyond strong account UX to manage ATO in embedded payments?

Hardened account flows are essential, but they’re only part of the picture. Most fintech platforms also rely on a fraud‑detection and risk‑management layer that can monitor ACH, card, and wallet transactions in near real time; surface suspicious patterns like account takeover, card testing, or refund abuse; and keep false positives low so good transactions keep flowing. CSG Payments Protection.ai is designed for exactly this role, combining AI‑powered rules, cross‑channel monitoring, and expert risk guidance.

Why is account takeover such a big risk in embedded payment environments?

When payments, reporting and payouts are embedded into your platform, a compromised account lets attackers change payment details, reroute funds, or set up unauthorized charges that look legitimate in your systems.

This combines traditional account takeover with direct financial and compliance exposure.

How can we add MFA and step-up authentication without hurting conversion?

Use risk-based, context-aware friction: require MFA or OTP for high-risk actions—new devices, unusual IPs, payout-account changes, large or unusual refunds—while keeping low-risk, everyday logins and payments straightforward.

Monitoring device, behavior and session context lets you reserve extra friction for the riskiest moments.

What changes if we move from an aggregator model to PFaaS or Registered Payment Facilitation?

You gain more control over branding, onboarding, pricing and payout flows—but also take on more responsibility for underwriting, ongoing monitoring and compliance scope (including AML, sanctions screening, PCI and ACH risk management).

That means your account and ATO defenses need to mature alongside your payment facilitation model.

How do Nacha rules affect ATO controls around bank-account changes?

For ACH, Nacha expects originators and related parties to implement risk-based processes to identify fraudulent transactions; recent WEB debit rules explicitly call out account validation at first use and when account numbers change as part of a “commercially reasonable fraudulent transaction detection system.”

Treating bank-account and payout changes as high-risk events, with validation and step-up checks, aligns with that direction.

How to Design Recurring Insurance Payments That Protect Cash Flow

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Key Takeaways

  • Well-designed recurring premiums and payment plans reduce involuntary churn and late payments while making premium cash flow more predictable.
  • Flexible schedules, multiple payment methods and clear communications help policyholders feel in control—improving on-time payments and satisfaction.
  • A modern, omnichannel bill pay platform is essential to run recurring strategies at scale, with validation, account updater, reminders and reporting that reduce manual work.

Insurance leaders spend millions winning new policyholders—only to lose too many of them to something as basic as billing.

Cards expire. ACH debits hit at the wrong time. Paper notices arrive late. A policyholder who fully intends to stay suddenly finds themselves out of coverage, frustrated, and shopping for a new carrier.

Thoughtful recurring payments and payment plans change that story. When they’re designed around real-world cash cycles, multiple rails and clear communication, they can:

  • Avoid coverage lapses and involuntary churn
  • Make cash flow more predictable for insurance leaders
  • Reduce manual workload for billing and call-center teams
  • Give policyholders control over how and when they pay

This article walks forward-thinking insurance professionals through the steps to ensure recurring premiums and plans are designed to support retention, increase cash flow, and improve customer satisfaction.

 

Why recurring payments matter in insurance

Insurance is, at its core, a subscription: policyholders pay on a set cadence for ongoing protection.

When that cadence is automated, reliable and transparent, everyone benefits.

Avoid lapses

A surprising amount of “churn” in insurance is involuntary. Customers often mean to stay, but lose coverage because a payment failed and never got fixed in time.

Common breakdowns include:

  • An expired or reissued card that isn’t updated in the portal
  • An ACH debit that lands a day before payday instead of after
  • A vague “payment error” notice that arrives by mail when the grace period is almost over

Recurring setups can significantly reduce those avoidable lapses via:

  • Multiple rails (card, ACH, digital wallets)
  • Smarter retries and timing
  • Clear digital notifications

Stabilize cash flow

For CFOs and actuaries, premium cash flow underpins investment decisions, reinsurance strategy and growth plans. Automated, scheduled collections make it easier to:

  • Forecast monthly and annual inflows
  • Model the impact of rate changes or new products
  • Manage liquidity with fewer surprises

Industry payment research shows that automatic payments create steadier revenue and lower days-sales-outstanding for subscription-style businesses, improving budgeting and resource allocation.

Reduce manual work

Every manual payment typically touches multiple teams: agents, contact centers, billing, finance and sometimes collections. Adding recurring payments (especially via self-service digital channels) can:

  • Shift more payments out of the call center and mail
  • Reduce dunning and reinstatement work tied to missed payments
  • Cut down on one-off adjustments and suspense accounts

That’s a core theme of insurance payment modernization: a modern, omnichannel platform reduces manual work while improving collections and retention.

 

4 smart recurring options for policyholders

The real design question isn’t “Should we offer recurring?” It’s “Which recurring models fit our customers and risk appetite?”

1. Build around real-life cash cycles

Policyholders don’t all budget the same way. A small, intentional set of options usually works better than an endless menu.

Examples:

  • Cadence options: monthly, quarterly, semiannual, annual
  • Paycheck-aligned dates—such as 1st/15th or specific weekdays following typical payroll dates—to reduce NSF risk for wage earners
  • For some products, aligning drafts to benefit disbursements (e.g., income-protection benefits) [needs internal validation]

In other essential services, aligning due dates with income cycles has been shown to reduce delinquencies and insufficient-funds events.

If your systems can’t support many cadences, even allowing customers to choose between a few draft days (for example, 1st, 10th, 20th) creates a sense of control and can improve on-time payments.

2. Support multiple rails—but steer intelligently

Modern insurance payment stacks should support a mix of:

  • ACH / eCheck for stability and lower cost on large or recurring premiums
  • Cards for familiarity and smooth digital enrollment, especially in new-business flows
  • Digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, etc.) where adoption is high—particularly on mobile

ACH is critical for many recurring premiums because bank accounts tend to change less frequently than cards and have lower decline rates over time.

3. Clarify “autopay” vs. “recurring but confirmed”

Not everyone is ready for a full “set-it-and-forget-it” draft. Offer tiers of automation:

  • Autopay: the premium is debited automatically on a set schedule (with clear notices and change/cancel options)
  • Assistive recurring: reminders with the amount and stored method pre-filled; the policyholder taps to approve each time
  • Hybrid: autopay for the base premium, manual for variable charges or fees

This lets cautious policyholders build trust gradually, while still improving predictability for the insurer.

4. Make options consistent across channels

Whatever recurring structures you offer should be:

  • Visible and manageable in web and mobile portals
  • Available (or at least viewable) via IVR and contact-center scripts
  • Reflected consistently in statements, emails and texts

When agents see one view and portals show another, policyholders quickly lose confidence and are less likely to enroll—or stay enrolled—in recurring options.

 

Encouraging adoption without pressuring customers

Recurring premiums and plans only work when policyholders see them as tools that help them stay covered—not mechanisms that trap them.

Make recurring the easiest path—not the only path

Subtle choices matter:

  • Present recurring options prominently at quote, bind, first payment and renewal—but always keep a clearly visible one-time payment option
  • Pre-select a recommended schedule (for example, monthly ACH on or just after payday), with a simple way to change it
  • Use plain language to explain:
    • What amount will be drafted
    • On what dates
    • How to pause, cancel or change the method

Communicate like a partner

Policyholders are more likely to adopt—and stay on—autopay when communication feels supportive instead of punitive.

Best practices include:

  • Proactive reminders before the first recurring debit and before each renewal
  • Immediate confirmations after each successful payment (via email, SMS or app)
  • Clear, friendly decline alerts that explain what happened (for example, “card expired”) and offer one-click paths to fix it

Tie these into your broader customer journey so billing messages match the tone and channels used for other key updates, like claims status.

Avoid dark patterns and coercion

Regulators and consumers are increasingly sensitive to billing practices that feel deceptive or coercive. Avoid:

  • Making autopay a de facto requirement for basic products when it’s not necessary
  • Hiding fees or conditions in dense fine print
  • Making cancellation significantly harder than enrollment

Instead, focus on:

  • Transparent benefits (fewer late fees, lower lapse risk, less paperwork)
  • Optional, modest incentives where allowed (for example, reduced installment fees for ACH autopay) [needs internal validation]
  • Everyday-scenario education (“Set your draft two days after payday so you’re not worrying about timing.”)

To prove recurring strategies are working—and to refine them—track metrics in three categories.

1. Retention and coverage continuity

  • Lapse rate tied to non-payment (new business and renewal)
  • Reinstatement rate and average time to reinstate
  • Involuntary churn: percentage of cancellations where a failed payment was the trigger

2. Payment performance

  • Autopay adoption rate by product and channel
  • Success rate for recurring payments (card vs. ACH vs. wallet)
  • Decline reasons (insufficient funds, expired credential, invalid account data, risk blocks)
  • Retry recovery rate: percent of failed payments successfully collected after retries or outreach

3. Operational efficiency

  • Billing-related call volume (especially “payment didn’t go through” and “how do I pay”)
  • Average handle time for payment calls
  • Manual work per 1,000 payments (exceptions, adjustments, suspense/unapplied cash)
  • Time to reconcile and month-end close impacts

These metrics help connect recurring design decisions (rails, timing, reminders) to measurable outcomes in cash flow, retention and workload.

 

Where a modern bill pay platform fits in

Designing smart recurring options on paper is one thing; running them at scale is another.

Many carriers still rely on fragmented systems that include multiple portals, limited ACH and wallet support, manual reminders and brittle reconciliation. This fragmentation makes recurring payment strategies fragile.

A modern, omnichannel bill pay platform for insurance is built to:

  • Present consistent one-time and recurring options across web, mobile, IVR, text-to-pay, in-person and agent-assisted channels
  • Support complex recurring premiums and payment plans (scheduled, partial, over-payments) from a single configuration layer
  • Integrate account validation, account updater and recovery services to reduce recurring failures at the source
  • Deliver near real-time reporting and standardized reconciliation files, cutting manual work

CSG’s payments and customer experience journey solutions are designed around these principles—helping insurers reduce declines, modernize self-service payments, and orchestrate reminders and recovery flows that quietly protect coverage and cash flow.

For most teams, the next step is straightforward: assess your current recurring options, rails mix and metrics, then build a roadmap that pairs better plan design with the right underlying platform.

Ready to future-proof your insurance payments? Discover how a modern bill pay platform streamlines recurring premium strategies, boosts retention and protects your cash flow. Contact us today for a personalized assessment and start optimizing your payment experience.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the most common reasons recurring insurance premiums fail?

Typically: insufficient funds, expired or reissued cards, invalid or changed account data, technical issues and fraud/risk checks that block a transaction. Insurers can address these with ACH options, account verification, card updater services, smart retry logic and clear decline communications.

Is ACH better than cards for recurring insurance payments?

ACH is often lower-cost and more stable for large, recurring premiums because bank accounts change less frequently and have lower decline rates than cards. Cards and wallets are still valuable for convenience and enrollment, so best practice is to support both—and steer long-tenure, higher-balance premiums toward ACH where appropriate.

How can insurers encourage autopay adoption without upsetting customers?

Make recurring the easiest—but not only—path; use plain language about control and cancellation; send reminders and confirmations; and avoid dark patterns like hiding fees or making cancellation difficult.

Do recurring premium strategies increase compliance or security risk?

They introduce requirements around consent, disclosure and payment data protection, plus ACH validation and dispute handling. Using PCI-compliant hosted payment forms, tokenization, encryption and Nacha-aligned ACH flows helps mitigate those risks.

Can a modern bill pay platform handle recurring premiums for multiple products and channels?

Yes. Modern bill pay platforms are designed to support recurring, scheduled, partial and over-payments across web, mobile, IVR, text-to-pay and agent-assisted channels, integrated with policy, billing and claims systems.

Virtual Card Reimbursements: Where Posting Breaks Down (And How STP Fixes It)

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Key Takeaways

  • Virtual card payments often look digital but still rely on mail, manual keying and spreadsheet-driven posting—which slows cash and increases risk.
  • Straight Through Processing (STP) automates Optum virtual card payments end-to-end, unifying funds and remittance to support auto-posting and cleaner reconciliation.
  • Physician groups can pilot STP in 90 days, targeting high-volume, high-friction reimbursement streams without changing payer adjudication or core clinical systems.

If you look only at payer portals and remittance advice, virtual card payments seem like progress. Funds are “digital,” checks are disappearing, and payers can route reimbursements over card rails instead of the mail.

But if you sit in a physician group finance or admin role, the view is different. Every “payment available” notice can trigger a familiar chain: someone logs into a portal or opens mail, retrieves card details, runs the card, hunts down the remit, then works the posting and reconciliation by hand—often across multiple systems and spreadsheets.

On paper, those dollars are “paid.” In practice, they’re not truly closed out in your ledger for days or weeks. That’s where posting breaks down—and where Straight Through Processing (STP) is designed to help.

This blog unpacks why virtual card reimbursements create so much posting friction for physician groups and how STP changes the flow from “approved” to “deposited and reconciled,” without forcing a rip-and-replace of your revenue systems.

 

Why “digital” virtual card payments still behave like paper

Most posting problems with virtual card payments aren’t about a single big failure. They’re the result of how information moves—piecemeal—between payers, portals, lockboxes, and your internal teams.

For many physician groups today, an Optum or other payer virtual card reimbursement looks like this:

  1. Payment available: The payer and/or Optum issues a virtual card for an adjudicated claim. A notice arrives by mail or via a payer portal.
  2. Retrieval: Staff open envelopes or log into portals to retrieve the card number, amount and basic remittance.
  3. Processing: Card details are keyed into a POS or virtual terminal as if they were a standard retail card transaction.
  4. Remittance match: Deposits are manually matched to 835s, PDFs, or portal remits. Teams rely on spreadsheets and workarounds when something doesn’t line up.
  5. Posting: Payments and adjustments are re-keyed into practice management (PM), EHR, or central business office systems.
  6. Reconciliation
    Finance reconciles bank activity to the GL by payer, location and specialty, dealing with gaps, delays, and unapplied cash.

That workflow “works,” but it’s slow, expensive, and hard to standardize—especially in multi-location physician groups with a complex payer mix.

 

Where posting breaks down in virtual card workflows

From a CFO’s perspective, there are four recurring break points that turn virtual card payments into posting headaches.

1. Card credentials are not a postable transaction

A mailed virtual card letter or portal credential is really just a set of instructions. Your staff have to turn it into cash and accounting entries: retrieve, run, post, reconcile.

Every step adds delay and introduces the risk of:

  • Wrong amounts keyed
  • Missed timing (expired cards, missed redemption windows)
  • Payments run but never fully reconciled back to the remit

At scale, this becomes thousands of low-value touches per month for centralized cash posting teams.

2. Funds and remittances don’t travel together

In many card-by-mail models, you see the deposit on the bank side well before a complete, standardized remit is available in your revenue system. Staff are left to answer: “What does this deposit belong to?”

That separation creates:

  • Unapplied cash and backlog at month-end
  • Misapplied payments when line items are matched incorrectly
  • Extra research work to satisfy auditors and internal controls

3. One virtual card often covers many claims

Virtual cards frequently bundle multiple encounters, patients, or service lines. If your tools don’t receive a clean, machine-readable remittance alongside the deposit, your team performs manual “unbundling” in spreadsheets before they can post by claim or encounter.

The more specialties, locations, and TINs you have, the more complex this gets.

4. Manual keying expands your risk and compliance footprint

When staff handle card data directly—opening mail, reading card numbers, and entering them into terminals—you extend PCI scope and increase the number of people and locations exposed to sensitive information.

You also distribute control over a high-value revenue stream across improvised, local workflows instead of a governed, central process.

 

What STP is and how it changes the last mile

STP is CSG Forte and Optum Financial’s answer to these breakdowns. Internally, it’s defined as a payment automation process that lets healthcare providers receive payments from insurance companies and from patients (via their payers) in about one day, directly into their bank accounts.

The key is that STP doesn’t ask payers to stop using virtual card payments. It changes what happens next:

  • The payer and Optum continue to originate virtual cards for adjudicated claims, just as they do today.
  • Instead of printing and mailing card details or relying on manual portal retrieval, Optum sends virtual card credentials and remittance data electronically to CSG Forte over secure, encrypted channels.
  • CSG Forte processes those virtual cards automatically and deposits funds into your designated bank account—typically the next business day after approval, rather than weeks later.
  • Payment and remittance data are delivered together through Forte’s platform (Dex) and into your revenue tools where integrated, supporting auto-posting and faster reconciliation.

For your team, the experience shifts from “we finish the last mile by hand” to “reimbursements show up as electronic deposits with usable remittance data.”

 

How STP fixes the posting problem

From a physician group admin/CFO lens, STP addresses the root causes of posting friction.

1. Eliminating “retrieve and key” work

For Optum virtual card streams enrolled in STP, your staff no longer:

  • Open envelopes or log into portals to pull card numbers.
  • Key 16-digit card details into a terminal.
  • Re-key the same amounts and adjustments into billing systems.

Those steps are handled electronically. Your revenue cycle team can move from touching every payment to managing defined exception queues.

2. Unifying funds and remittance

Because STP carries both the virtual card transaction and associated remittance data, deposits arrive with the context needed to post them correctly.

That supports:

  • Auto-posting of payments and adjustments where your PM/EHR or RCM is integrated
  • Cleaner reconciliation in Dex and core finance systems
  • Less unapplied cash and fewer “mystery” deposits at month-end

3. Standardizing workflows across clinics and specialties

STP gives finance and revenue leaders a way to centralize how virtual card reimbursements are handled—even if front-end systems and payer mixes vary by location or specialty.

You can:

  • Define routing rules by payer, specialty, entity, and bank account.
  • Apply consistent controls and exception handling across the footprint.
  • Reduce reliance on local spreadsheets and “shadow systems” to close gaps.

4. Reducing risk and tightening controls

STP is designed to operate within PCI DSS, HIPAA and HITRUST-aligned security frameworks.

Card data and remittance information flow through encrypted, access-controlled systems instead of mailrooms, desktops and ad-hoc terminals.

That enables:

  • A smaller group of staff with direct access to payment data
  • End-to-end audit trails from Optum transaction ID to bank deposit to GL entry
  • Clear segregation of duties between configuration, exception resolution, and financial approval

 

Two flows to focus on: insurer and patient-via-payer

For physician groups, STP impacts two main sets of virtual card payments.

1. Insurer (B2B) reimbursements

  1. A patient visit is coded and billed.
  2. The payer adjudicates and approves a portion of the claim.
  3. Optum generates a virtual card for the allowed amount and routes credentials + remittance data to CSG Forte under the STP model.
  4. Forte processes the virtual card and deposits funds to your bank account, typically within one business day of approval.
  5. Payment and remittance data are surfaced in Dex and, where integrated, flow into your revenue and finance systems for posting and reconciliation.

2. Patient (C2B) payments via payer portals

  1. After insurance, the patient owes a remaining balance (copay, deductible, coinsurance).
  2. The patient pays that balance through a payer-linked portal using an HSA/FSA or other card.
  3. That payment hits the payer’s engine, which creates a virtual card for the patient-owed amount and sends it via STP to CSG Forte.
  4. Forte processes the virtual card and deposits funds into your account, aligning the payment with the same claim and patient.

By centralizing both flows, STP gives your finance team a clearer, more predictable picture of cash from insurer contracts and payer-portal patient payments.

 

Evaluating STP as a physician group finance leader

You don’t need to treat STP as a major IT overhaul. Internal playbooks position it as something you can pilot in 90 days with a focused, data-driven approach.

Here’s a practical way to frame the decision.

Step 1: Quantify the current burden

With revenue cycle and operations leaders, gather:

  • Monthly volume of Optum virtual card payments, by payer and specialty
  • Minutes of staff time per payment from “payment available” to posted and reconciled
  • Effective fee rate on those virtual card payments, including any value-add services
  • Exception rate: percentage of payments requiring rework or escalation

This gives you a directional view of how much FTE capacity and margin these workflows consume today.

Step 2: Identify high-impact cohorts for a pilot

Look for combinations of:

  • High virtual card volume
  • Long lag between approval and posting
  • Heavy manual work and backlog

These payer/specialty/location cohorts are strong candidates for a first STP rollout.

Step 3: Design a 90-day straight-through reimbursement pilot

Internal guidance outlines a 0–90-day path:

  • Days 0–30: discover and map current steps, touch points and systems
  • Days 31–60: configure STP enrollment and bank routing with Optum and CSG Forte; connect to Dex and test with a limited scope
  • Days 61–90: expand to more sites/specialties, monitor auto-posting and exception metrics, and refine rules and training

The objective is not perfect automation on day one. It’s a governed, measurable improvement in:

  • Time from approval to deposit
  • Hours per 1,000 payments
  • Exceptions per 1,000 payments
  • Unapplied cash and reconciliation noise

 

Where STP fits alongside ACH and other rails

It’s important to note that STP isn’t an all-or-nothing choice. Providers can request standard EFT/ERA via ACH from payers where it’s available and continue to use ACH wherever it makes sense.

Today’s STP offering is intentionally focused on virtual card reimbursements—both insurer payments and patient payments via payer portals.

Many groups pursue ACH and STP together:

  • Use ACH where it’s available and well supported.
  • Apply STP to the large and growing slice of virtual card payments that aren’t going away in the near term.

That combined approach lets you reduce paper and posting friction now, instead of waiting for every payer to standardize on EFT.

 

Bringing it back to your physician group

Margins for physician groups are under pressure from rising costs, staffing constraints and shifting payer mix. When your most predictable revenue streams are slowed down by envelopes, portals and manual posting, you’re effectively paying a “time and labor tax” on dollars you’ve already earned.

Virtual card payments aren’t going away—but the paper-era processes around them can.

Straight Through Processing with CSG Forte and Optum Financial is designed to:

  • Replace mailed virtual cards with automated, next-day deposits for enrolled reimbursements.
  • Deliver payment and remittance together so posting and reconciliation run cleaner.
  • Standardize workflows across clinics and specialties without forcing a new EHR or PM system.
  • Strengthen control, audit and security posture around a high-value revenue stream.

If you’re seeing backlogs, inconsistent workflows and too many spreadsheets in your virtual card reimbursement process, STP is worth a closer look.

Sign up today for a focused pilot, which can quickly show whether “approved” can reliably become “deposited and reconciled” in days instead of weeks.

 

FAQs

What are virtual card payments in healthcare?

Virtual card payments are payer-funded card transactions generated for approved claims or patient balances. Instead of sending a paper check, the payer (or an intermediary such as Optum) issues a card credential that the provider processes like a card transaction.

Why do virtual card payments create posting challenges for physician groups?

Because card credentials and remittance often arrive separately, staff must retrieve card numbers, run them through terminals, then manually match deposits to remittance files across systems. This adds delay, increases error risk and makes it harder to reconcile cash by payer, specialty and location.

What is Straight Through Processing (STP) for virtual card payments?

STP is a payment automation process from CSG Forte and Optum Financial that keeps the virtual card funding model but automates acceptance, settlement and reconciliation. Payers still generate virtual cards, but send card and remittance data electronically to CSG Forte for automatic processing, deposit, and delivery of postable remittance data.

Does STP replace ACH EFT or checks?

STP focuses on virtual card reimbursements, including payer and payer-portal patient payments. Providers can still request EFT/ERA via ACH where available, and many use ACH and STP together—using ACH for traditional electronic payments and STP to automate the remaining virtual card volume.

How does STP support compliance and security requirements?

STP is designed to operate within HIPAA, PCI DSS and HITRUST-aligned frameworks, keeping card and remittance data within encrypted, access-controlled systems and reducing the number of staff who handle card credentials directly. That helps narrow PCI scope and strengthens audit trails for payer remittances.

Reduce Late Utility Payments with Automatic Reminders and Recurring Autopay

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Key Takeaways

  • Thoughtful utility payment plans plus recurring autopay can reduce delinquencies without sacrificing fairness or compliance.
  • Multichannel reminders—email, text and automated calls—work best when they’re timed before due dates and written in a supportive, action-oriented tone.
  • Unifying bill presentment, payment channels and revenue-protection tools like account updater and NSF recovery helps utilities cut call volume and manual collections work.

When residents fall behind on utility bills, it doesn’t just hurt cash flow. It drives more billing questions, more payment-plan negotiations, and more tense conversations about late fees and shutoffs.

Many utilities respond by tightening collections, but there’s another path: combine flexible, well-structured utility payment plans with smarter, automated reminders and recurring autopay. Done right, this approach can reduce late payments and call volume while staying fair, compliant and secure.

This guide outlines how utility leaders can modernize payment plans and communications—without overhauling core systems or putting revenue at risk.

 

Why residents fall behind on utility bills

Most delinquencies are not about refusal to pay. They’re usually about timing, friction and confusion. Common drivers include:

  • Mismatched billing and pay cycles: Residents get paid weekly or biweekly, but bills are due on fixed dates that may fall just before payday.
  • Bill shock and seasonality: Weather extremes, usage spikes or rate changes can push even reliable payers into arrears for a month or two.
  • High-friction payment experiences: If residents must mail a check, stand in line or navigate a clunky portal, it’s easy to procrastinate. Internal guidance notes that outdated, single-channel portals often drive abandonment, unpaid bills and more calls instead of self-service.
  • Payment failures residents never see: Expired or reissued cards can silently break existing autopay arrangements, creating “mystery delinquencies” until a shutoff notice or large past-due balance appears.

At the same time, customer expectations have shifted toward digital, low-friction payments. Federal Reserve data from 2024 shows that nearly 70% of consumers prefer paying bills digitally instead of with checks or in-person payments, and more than half of U.S. consumers say they prefer mobile apps for utility payments.

These preferences create an opportunity: make it easier to pay on time, instead of focusing only on penalties when payments are late.

 

Designing flexible payment plans that still protect revenue

A modern utility payment plan should help residents succeed and safeguard the utility’s revenue. That balance comes from standardization, automation and built-in safeguards.

Standardize plan types and eligibility

Instead of one-off arrangements that depend on which agent answered the phone, define a small set of plan templates, such as:

  • Short-term catch-up plans (e.g., 2–3 installments)
  • Extended plans for larger arrears (e.g., 6–12 installments)
  • “Current + arrears” plans where residents pay the new bill plus a fixed amount toward the past-due balance

Eligibility rules—like minimum/maximum balances, number of plans allowed per 12 months and hardship flags—can be configured in billing systems or payment platforms so frontline staff are applying policies consistently.

This kind of standardization is echoed in internal playbooks on payment plans best practices, which recommend a limited set of options with clear parameters so staff can enroll residents quickly and fairly.

Make plans easy to execute, not just easy to approve

Affordability on paper isn’t enough; residents also need low-friction ways to follow through. Best practices include:

  • Scheduled payments: Let residents choose specific draft dates that line up with their paydays.
  • Recurring/autopay for installments: Encourage residents to put installment amounts on a recurring schedule—either card or ACH—so they don’t have to remember each payment manually.
  • Multichannel access: Offer online, IVR/phone and in-person options, all connected to the same account balance.

When residents can enroll and manage plans through self-service channels, you reduce pressure on contact center staff and shorten call times.

Prevent and repair “silent failures”

Recurring plans often fail because payment credentials change. Instead of waiting for declines and manual outreach, utilities can:

  • Use stored credentials with tokenization so cards can be updated centrally without re-keying each account.
  • Add an account updater service where available, so expired, changed or reissued card details are refreshed automatically.

For example, Hall’s Culligan Water activated an account updater add-on and, in the first month, processed $258,000 more in payments—a 3% increase in successful collections—completed over 4,000 cardholder updates and recovered $193,000 from cards that only needed expiration dates updated.

For utilities, similar tools can keep autopay and installment plans running with far less manual work.

Bake in security and compliance

Because utilities handle sensitive financial data and serve broad populations, payment flexibility must sit on a strong security foundation, including:

  • Tokenization to secure recurring transactions and keep card data out of utility systems
  • PCI-validated encryption so payment data is protected from the moment it’s entered
  • ACH account validation and NSF recovery that align with Nacha rules for ACH debits and retries

These capabilities help utilities offer more options and automation without expanding compliance risk.

 

Using reminders wisely: channel, timing and tone

Reminders are powerful, but if they’re poorly designed, they can feel intrusive. The goal is to send fewer, more relevant messages at the right time and on the right channel.

Channel: meet residents where they are

The right payer engagement platform should combine email, SMS and automated calls to reach more diverse populations.

Consider:

  • Email for full bill details, plan confirmations and receipts
  • SMS/text for short nudges—“Your bill of $X is due on [date]. Pay now: [link]”
  • Automated voice/IVR for residents who prefer or rely on phone payments

Timing: intervene before penalties and shutoffs

A typical cadence might include:

  • Upcoming-due reminders 3–5 days before the due date
  • Day-of nudges with a one-click or one-tap path to pay
  • Early past-due notices (1–3 days after) that clearly explain options, including payment plans
  • Installment reminders a few days before scheduled payments so residents can confirm funds

Tone: supportive and action-oriented

Especially in essential services, tone matters:

  • Focus on information and options, not blame
  • Clearly state amount, due date and what to do next
  • When past due, highlight ways to avoid interruption—Pay now, Schedule a payment, or Set up a payment plan

This approach respects residents’ circumstances while still driving action.

 

Coordinating billing, customer service and collections

Reducing late payments isn’t just a collections problem; it’s an end-to-end payments problem. Utilities see the best results when billing, customer service and collections teams share one playbook.

Billing: clear presentment and unified channels

Billing teams can:

  • Move more bill presentment online with EBPP (electronic bill presentment and payment) to send invoices electronically so customers can view bills and pay on their own, which speeds payment and reduces customer service calls.
  • Consolidate payment channels into a single, integrated platform to reduce errors and confusion from fragmented systems.
  • Ensure bills (paper and digital) clearly call out self-service options and how to enroll in autopay or payment plans.

Customer service: resolve issues and close the loop

Frontline agents need tools that let them help residents in a single interaction:

  • Quick access to standardized plan options and eligibility rules
  • The ability to send secure payment links during a call, so residents can complete payments on their device without reading card or bank details aloud (this also reduces PCI scope).
  • Visibility into whether reminder emails, texts or calls were sent, to avoid confusing experiences for residents

Collections: focus on true non-payers

When plans, reminders and autopay are working, collections teams can:

  • Spend more time on genuinely at-risk accounts instead of routine delinquencies
  • Use analytics (e.g., frequent NSFs, chronic non-response) to prioritize outreach
  • Work more closely with billing and CX to refine upstream policies and scripts

Real-world examples from adjacent sectors show what this looks like in practice. WasteWORKS, a solid waste management platform serving utilities and waste facilities, integrated CSG Forte to support online, in-person and card-on-file payments. Facilities now process payments “in seconds,” see fewer manual errors and have a seamless experience at every touchpoint, processing more than 144,000 payments each month through CSG Forte.

That same model—flexible channels with strong back-office integration—translates directly to utilities.

 

How to measure the impact on delinquencies and call volume

To prove the value of flexible plans and smarter reminders, track changes across three dimensions: delinquencies, operations and customer experience.

1. Delinquencies and revenue metrics

Key measures include:

  • Percentage of accounts 1–30, 31–60 and 61+ days past due
  • Average days sales outstanding (DSO) or equivalent receivables aging
  • Adoption and completion rate of payment plans
  • Autopay enrollment rate (overall and among previously delinquent segments)
  • Card and ACH decline rates before and after implementing tools like account validation, account updater and NSF recovery

2. Call center and operations metrics

Monitor:

  • Total billing- and payment-related call volume
  • Calls specifically about past-due balances or payment plans
  • Average handle time for payment calls
  • Self-service containment (what percentage of payments occur without an agent)
  • Manual work effort in collections (for example, hours spent manually updating cards or chasing declined payments)

Hall’s Culligan reports that after adding CSG Forte’s Account Updater, staff saved significant time because more than 4,000 cardholder records were updated automatically in the first month, rather than through 15–20-minute calls per decline.

3. Customer experience and fairness indicators

To ensure your approach is both effective and equitable, track:

  • Complaint rates related to billing, fees and shutoffs
  • The share of residents using digital channels vs. in-person/phone, segmented by demographics where possible
  • Re-default rates among residents who completed a payment plan
  • Qualitative feedback from surveys or community forums about payment communication and options

Over time, you can adjust plan structures, reminder timing and channel mix based on what improves both on-time payment and satisfaction.

 

Bringing it all together with modern utility payment solutions

The most effective strategy doesn’t treat payment plans, reminders and autopay as separate projects. Instead, it weaves them together into a single, modern payment experience:

  • Clear, electronic bill presentment and self-service access
  • Standardized, flexible utility payment plans tuned to resident realities
  • Scheduled and recurring payments that align with pay cycles
  • Automated, multichannel reminders with respectful language
  • A secure, compliant infrastructure that protects both customer data and cash flow

CSG Forte’s utility billing and payment solutions are designed to support exactly this kind of approach, with omnichannel acceptance (online, IVR, in-person), payer engagement capabilities for reminders and flexible payment options, and secure electronic bill presentment.

If your organization is ready to reduce late payments, lower call volume and improve the resident experience, it may be time to revisit your payment strategy.

Talk with CSG Forte’s sales experts to explore how modern utility payment plans, reminders and recurring autopay can work within your existing systems and policies. You can also download our government-specific eBook to learn more about how CSG Forte serves government-run utility customers.

 

FAQs

What is a utility payment plan?

A utility payment plan is an agreement that lets a customer pay down a past-due balance over time—often in fixed installments—while keeping current bills paid. Modern plans can be managed online, over the phone or in person, and may support recurring or scheduled payments.

How do recurring autopay options reduce late utility payments?

When residents enroll in recurring payments for their monthly bill or plan installments, they no longer rely on remembering due dates. Combined with card updater and ACH validation tools, autopay can significantly reduce missed or declined payments.

What channels should utilities use for payment reminders?

Best practice is to combine email (for detail), SMS/text (for quick nudges and pay links) and automated phone/IVR for residents who prefer to call. CSG Forte’s payer engagement and utilities solutions highlight this multichannel approach to reduce delinquencies and support diverse customer preferences.

How can utilities keep flexible payment options secure and compliant?

Utilities should work with providers that support tokenization, PCI-validated encryption, ACH account validation and Nacha-compliant NSF recovery. CSG Forte emphasizes these controls across its utilities and bill presentment solutions.

What metrics show that payment plans and reminders are working?

Track past-due rates by aging bucket, autopay and plan adoption, card/ACH decline rates, billing-related call volume, and complaints about billing or shutoffs. CSG Forte case studies, like Hall’s Culligan and WasteWORKS, demonstrate how the right tools improve collections and reduce manual workload.

Straight Through Processing for Virtual Card Reimbursements: A Practical Guide for Physician Groups

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Key Takeaways

  • Discover how CSG Forte Straight Through Processing (STP) can automate and streamline virtual card physician payments, minimizing manual tasks, and accelerating cash flow.
  • Learn why traditional “last mile” payment processes slow down reimbursements and create administrative headaches for physician groups.
  • Find out how hospital-owned and mid-size practices can leverage STP for faster insurance reimbursement without overhauling their core systems.

Hospital and physician group leaders have spent years digitizing registration, eligibility, coding, and claims. Yet many physician payments still move through a surprisingly manual “last mile” between “claim approved” and “cash posted and reconciled.”

That last mile is often built around virtual cards that arrive by mail or require portal logins, followed by:

  • Staff keying card numbers into terminals.
  • Teams re-keying amounts and adjustments into practice management or electronic health record (EHR) systems.
  • Finance matching deposits to remittance files days or weeks later.

On paper, these are “digital” payments. In reality, they behave like a paper-era process that slows cash, increases risk, and consumes scarce revenue cycle capacity.

This guide explains how Straight Through Processing (STP) for Optum virtual card reimbursements works, why it matters for faster insurance reimbursement, and how hospital-owned and mid-size physician groups can adopt it without replacing their core clinical or billing platforms.

 

Why the “last mile” still breaks physician payments

From a distance, your payer mix may look familiar: Medicare, Medicaid, commercial, and self-pay. But the cash dynamics behind that mix have shifted.

High-deductible plans and rising out-of-pocket costs mean more of each encounter’s total charge falls to the patient after insurance. Those balances are harder to predict and collect, so health systems rely even more on timely insurer reimbursements to stabilize working capital.

When that “reliable” side of revenue is tied up in manual virtual card workflows, you see:

  • Variable time to cash: It can take 30–90 days from claim approval to deposit when mail, batching, and manual posting are involved.
  • Persistent admin burden: Staff open envelopes, log into portals, key cards, re-key into billing systems, and resolve mismatches across locations and specialties.
  • Fragmented control: Each clinic or specialty may handle remittances differently, making it hard for finance to see total cost, risk, and performance.
  • Expanded compliance scope: The more people touch card data and remittance details, the broader your Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and audit footprint becomes.

Against this backdrop, it’s no longer enough to focus only on patient collections. To support margin and mission, physician group administrators, CFOs, and clinical leaders need physician payments from payers to move predictably and electronically, end-to-end.

 

How virtual card reimbursements work today

For many groups that receive virtual card reimbursements, the current-state process looks like this:

  1. “Payment available”
    The payer issues a virtual card for an adjudicated claim and sends a notice via mail or portal.
  2. Retrieval
    Staff open envelopes or log into portals to retrieve card numbers and remittance details.
  3. Processing the card
    Card details are keyed into a point-of-sale (POS) or virtual terminal like a retail transaction.
  4. Matching remittance
    Teams manually match deposits to 835s, PDFs, or portal remittances.
  5. Posting
    Payments and adjustments are re-keyed into the EHR, practice management or central business office system.
  6. Reconciliation
    Finance reconciles bank activity to the GL, by payer, location, and specialty.

Every step introduces delay and the potential for error.

Across thousands of payments, this workflow drives up unit cost for each dollar collected and weighs down your revenue cycle team.

 

What is Straight Through Processing in healthcare?

STP for healthcare is a virtual-card-based payment automation service, built by CSG Forte in collaboration with Optum Financial, that allows healthcare providers to receive insurance reimbursements and patient payments (via their payers) in about one day, moving from initiation to completion without manual card handling or re-keying.

In the Optum model, STP focuses on the last mile of the payment, not the claim decision itself:

  • Optum still adjudicates claims and generates virtual cards (VCCs) for approved amounts.
  • Instead of mailing those card details, Optum transmits VCC data and remittance information electronically to CSG Forte over secure, encrypted channels.
  • CSG Forte processes those virtual cards and deposits funds directly into the provider’s bank account, typically the next business day.
  • Payment and remittance data appear together in a reconciliation platform (Dex) and can feed your revenue systems for posting and reporting.

From your team’s point of view, insurer and eligible patient payments simply arrive as electronic deposits with aligned remittance detail—no card numbers to handle and far fewer steps to manage.

 

How STP changes Optum virtual card reimbursements

Before STP: manual, card-by-card workflows

  • Virtual cards arrive via mail or require portal retrieval.
  • Staff key card numbers into terminals and re-key into billing systems.
  • Posting and reconciliation lag behind deposits.

With STP: a straight-through, electronic flow

Inside Optum’s STP model for physician payments:

  1. Claim is approved.
    Optum generates a virtual card for the approved amount, just as it does today.
  2. Optum sends VCC + remittance data to CSG Forte.
    Card details and associated remittance information move over encrypted channels—no paper, no portals.
  3. CSG Forte processes the card.
    Funds are deposited into the provider’s bank account—typically within one business day of approval instead of 30–90 days after a mailed card.
  4. Payment and remittance arrive together.
    Payment and 835-style remittance data appear in Dex and can be integrated with your EHR, practice management or RCM system for posting and reconciliation.
  5. Teams manage exceptions, not transactions.
    Most payments clear straight-through; staff work a smaller, focused queue of true exceptions.

The result is one integrated path from “approved” to “deposited and visible”—a critical building block for faster insurance reimbursement and more predictable cash flow.

 

Business impact for physician groups

STP is about more than getting paid a bit faster. For hospital-affiliated and independent physician groups, it supports a set of practical outcomes that matter at the board and clinic level.

1) Faster access to cash

Moving from up to 60–90 days of mail-based reimbursement to roughly one day after approval has a direct impact on days in accounts receivable and days cash on hand. This can:

  • Smooth month-to-month liquidity swings
  • Reduce reliance on short-term borrowing
  • Support more confident decisions about staffing, capital projects and service expansion

2) Lower administrative burden

With STP, your teams no longer need to:

  • Open envelopes and sort mail for virtual cards
  • Log into multiple portals and key card numbers
  • Manually match deposits to remittances across systems

Dex and your integrated systems consolidate payment and remittance data. Staff focus on exceptions instead of high-volume data entry—critical in a labor market where revenue cycle and billing roles are difficult to staff and retain.

3) Reduced fraud and loss exposure

Automated virtual card processing reduces the surface area for:

  • Intercepted mail and stolen card details
  • Card-testing on exposed numbers
  • Misapplied or misplaced payments that never make it to your deposit account

Keeping card data inside encrypted, access-controlled systems improves traceability and lowers loss risk.

4) Stronger security and compliance posture

CSG Forte’s healthcare payment capabilities, including STP, are designed to operate within HIPAA, PCI DSS, and HITRUST-aligned frameworks. Because your staff are no longer handling card numbers directly:

  • Your PCI scope is narrower and easier to manage
  • Your audit trail for payer remittances becomes more consistent
  • Security policies can focus on fewer, better-protected systems

5) Alignment with your broader automation strategy

Industry research continues to highlight a multi-billion-dollar savings opportunity from automating administrative processes across healthcare finance. STP fits neatly into that roadmap:

  • It runs behind the scenes with existing EHR and practice management systems—no “rip and replace.”
  • It tackles a high-volume, high-friction slice of revenue quickly.
  • It sets a pattern you can extend to other payment flows over time.

 

What still requires human judgment—and why that’s a strength

Receiving payments “straight through” does not mean “without humans.” It means your people apply their expertise where it matters most.

Common exceptions include:

  • Amount mismatches or unexpected adjustments
  • Missing or incomplete remittance data
  • Configuration issues (wrong bank account, entity or specialty mapping)

A clear ownership model helps:

  • Revenue cycle manages exception queues and posting quality.
  • Finance approves write-offs, reclasses, and escalations.
  • IT / RCM addresses recurring configuration and integration issues.

This structure keeps clinical and operational leaders confident that automation is improving control, not bypassing it.

 

Governance, risk, and audit readiness

Speed matters—but so does control. Within the Optum + CSG Forte STP model, governance is built around four pillars:

  • Approval flows: Finance decides which payer programs and virtual card streams enter STP and how funds route by specialty, entity, and location.
  • Audit trail: You can trace each payment from Optum transaction ID to virtual card, bank deposit, and GL entry, with logs of user actions on exceptions and configuration changes.
  • Exception routing and roles: Clear queues and role-based access support segregation of duties, reducing the risk of fraud or mis-posting.
  • Compliance alignment: STP is designed to operate within HIPAA, PCI DSS, and HITRUST expectations and to respect your organization’s data governance approach.

 

How to measure success: speed, effort, control

To demonstrate impact and keep leadership aligned, track metrics in three categories.

1) Speed (cash and posting)

  • Days from claim approval (or “payment available”) to bank deposit
  • Lag from deposit to posted and reconciled payment
  • Reduction in days in A/R for Optum virtual card flows

2) Effort (labor and exceptions)

  • Average minutes of staff time per payment, end-to-end
  • Exception rate (% of payments needing manual rework)
  • Size and age of unapplied cash and unmatched remittances

3) Control (visibility and audit)

  • Ability to trace Optum transaction ID to deposit and GL entry
  • Consistency of workflows and controls across locations and specialties
  • Findings and remediation items from internal or external audits related to payer payments

These metrics help quantify the value of faster insurance reimbursement and reduced manual work in language that resonates with executives, physicians, and board members alike.

 

Ready to unlock faster, safer, more predictable physician payments?

Virtual card reimbursements may carry a modern label, but the workflows around them often feel like anything but. Mail, portals, and manual posting introduce avoidable delay and risk at a time when physician groups cannot afford volatility in cash flow.

CSG Forte’s Straight Through Processing gives hospital-owned and independent physician groups a practical way to:

  • Replace mailed virtual cards with automated deposits.
  • Shorten reimbursement cycles from months to about a day.
  • Reduce fraud and compliance risk tied to manual card handling.
  • Free staff from low-value, repetitive work and redeploy them to higher-impact activities.

Don’t miss your chance to transform your reimbursement strategy and reduce administrative headaches.

For immediate access to innovative solutions and expert guidance, visit the CSG Forte and Optum Financial partner page now. Reach out to connect with specialists who are ready to support your journey and help you achieve operational excellence with confidence.

 

FAQs

1) What is Straight Through Processing (STP) in healthcare?

STP is a payment automation process that allows healthcare providers to receive payments from insurance companies and certain patient payments (via insurers) in about one day, directly into their bank accounts, without manual card handling or re-keying.

2) Does STP replace Optum virtual cards?

No. In the Optum model, the payer still generates a virtual card for each approved reimbursement or patient balance. STP changes what happens next by transmitting card and remittance data electronically to CSG Forte for automated processing and deposit.

3) How does STP support faster insurance reimbursement?

When mail and batching are involved, 30–90 days from approval to deposit is common. With STP, processing time can drop to as little as one day between approval and direct deposit, with auto-posting where enabled.

4) What work does STP remove for physician group staff?

STP is designed to eliminate manual card keying and duplicate data entry into billing systems for enrolled Optum virtual card streams and to reduce manual matching work by aligning payments and remittances.

5) What still requires human review?

Exceptions such as amount mismatches, missing remittance data and configuration issues still need human judgment, with clear ownership across revenue cycle, finance and IT/RCM teams.

6) Is STP compliant with healthcare security requirements?

Optum and CSG Forte position STP as PCI Compliant, HiTrust Certified, and HIPAA Compliant, built to meet healthcare-grade security and privacy standards.

7) Can we choose ACH instead of virtual cards with STP?

In the current Optum STP model, payments are processed exclusively via virtual credit card, with CSG Forte handling those cards and depositing funds into your accounts. Separately, you can request standard EFT/ERA via ACH where payers support it; many organizations pursue ACH and STP together.

8) What does pricing look like for STP?

Internal training materials illustrate that STP is priced using an interchange-plus model, with a combination of network fees, processor costs and a flat per-transaction charge—often at a lower effective rate than typical virtual card processing for large remittances. Your CSG Forte team can walk through specifics for your organization.

5 Ways Straight Through Processing Fixes Healthcare Cash Flow Fast

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When margins are thin and more revenue depends on patient responsibility, you can’t afford to wait 60–90 days for cash that’s already been approved.

CSG Forte’s Straight Through Processing (STP) turns mailed virtual cards and manual keying into next-day deposits with clean remittance data—without ripping out your EHR or practice management systems.

Here are 5 key points healthcare finance leaders need to know.

 

1. Traditional virtual card workflows are “digital” in name only

  • Payers mail virtual card letters to your practice or lockbox.
  • Staff open envelopes, key card numbers into terminals, and chase remits across systems.
  • Deposits and reconciliation can lag weeks or months behind approval.

 

2. Your payer mix may look familiar on paper, but the cash story has changed

  • High-deductible plans shift more of each encounter to the patient.
  • Patient-owed balances are harder to predict, harder to collect, and more likely to be written off.
  • That makes every predictable insurer dollar more important.

 

3. Mail-based virtual card workflows eat up time you don’t have

  • Opening and sorting envelopes.
  • Keying card numbers into terminals and systems.
  • Manually matching deposits and remittances days or weeks later.

 

4. Every mailed card is another exposure point

  • Intercepted letters and stolen card details.
  • Card testing fraud on exposed numbers.
  • Misapplied or lost payments that never reach your operating account.

 

5. Many “automation” initiatives stall because

  • They require invasive changes to core systems.
  • Payers can’t keep their existing adjudication processes and virtual card models.

 

Modern healthcare organizations can’t leave cash flow to chance

Not with:

  • Thin margins and uneven recovery.
  • Rising patient responsibility and falling collection rates.
  • Tight labor markets in revenue cycle and billing.
  • Existing HR, practice management, and RCM systems aren’t compatible.

 

That’s where Straight Through Processing comes in.

Behind the scenes, CSG Forte STP:

  • Turns both insurer reimbursements and payer-portal patient payments into next-day deposits, with each virtual card routed electronically, processed, and posted with remittance data already attached.
  • Consolidates these flows on a single healthcare-ready payments platform so your teams stop opening envelopes and keying card numbers; instead, they can work from clean, centralized data for posting, reconciliation, and reporting.
  • Keeps card data inside encrypted, access-controlled systems with HIPAA-, PCI DSS- and HITRUST-aligned controls like role-based access, MFA and IP whitelisting, shrinking your PCI footprint while strengthening audit trails.
  • Delivers faster, more predictable cash, less fraud and loss exposure, and a modernized revenue cycle you can scale without ripping and replacing your core systems.

If you’re ready to accelerate every predictable dollar while protecting your mission, it’s time to bring STP into your healthcare payment workflows.

Enroll in Straight Through Processing with CSG Forte today or contact us to see how it fits into your existing payer and revenue cycle stack.

Want to go deeper on how STP works across insurer and patient payment flows, security and reconciliation? Read our full guide to Straight Through Processing for healthcare finance leaders for more detail on workflows, compliance and implementation considerations.

Nonprofit Payments Can’t Be a Black Box: Why Owning Your Merchant Account Matters

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Earlier this month, the nonprofit sector got a painful reminder that “set it and forget it” donation infrastructure can quickly become a single point of failure.

Coverage from sources like Nonprofit News Feed and restructuring analysts chronicled what happened at Flipcause: Delayed remittances to nonprofits, a cease-and-desist order from the California Department of Justice, its payment processor’s termination of services and freeze of roughly $2.2 million in funds, and a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in Delaware with tens of millions in donations owed to thousands of nonprofits.

In those accounts, the sole payment processor is at the center of the dispute, holding a commingled pot that included both Flipcause’s operating funds and donor money earmarked for nonprofits. When that pooled account was frozen, donor dollars were effectively locked inside a processor–platform dispute, and organizations that thought they were “just using a fundraising tool” suddenly found themselves in a bankruptcy case.

The underlying pattern matters more than any single name. In many platform-centric models:

  • The platform, not the nonprofit, is the merchant of record—often through a single large processor.
  • Donor funds are pooled under the platform’s merchant ID, then remitted downstream on the platform’s schedule.
  • Payout timing and holds are governed by the platform’s processor and risk policies, not the nonprofit’s.

When that platform experiences processor issues, regulatory action, or an operational failure, thousands of organizations just like yours can feel the shock at once—often with little warning.

Whatever the ultimate outcomes in court in nonprofit funds mismanagement and potential fraud cases like the one Flipcause is the subject of, the operational lesson is immediate: if your fundraising flow depends on someone else’s rails, you’re exposed to payout interruptions, policy changes, processor actions, and compliance shocks you don’t control.

This blog outlines a practical framework describing why nonprofits should own their merchant account. It’s assurance that donor gifts and monthly contributions keep moving even when the landscape shifts.

 

When “convenient” becomes “vulnerable”

Nonprofits run on trust—and cash flow. If donations slow down, programs pause. If gifts are declined or mishandled, supporters don’t just abandon a transaction; they lose confidence in the organization’s ability to steward their financial support.

But many donation stacks were built for speed, not resilience, and that leaves nonprofits vulnerable to several common risks.

  • Funds held outside your control: When a third party sits between the supporter and your organization, gifts can sit in an account you don’t own. This creates “float” risk, delayed payouts, and opaque timing for when dollars actually hit your bank.
  • Single points of failure: If a platform’s payment processor cuts ties, tightens risk thresholds, or places holds, your donation flow can be disrupted overnight. In the Flipcause situation, public reporting references impacts tied to processor actions—including the payment processor’s decision to terminate services and freeze funds. This is a vivid illustration of how quickly a platform–processor relationship can cascade into missed payouts for nonprofits.
  • Compliance expectations are tightening: New rules—such as expanded monitoring requirements for automated clearing house (ACH) or eCheck fraud and card-network programs that scrutinize excessive fraud and disputes—raise the bar on how platforms and merchants manage payment risk. What used to count as “commercially reasonable” controls are no longer enough as regulators and networks formalize monitoring and enforcement.
  • Fraud is accelerating and industrialized: Industry research projects cumulative online payment fraud losses in the tens of billions each year. A large majority of organizations already report attempted or actual payments fraud, and attackers are now using automation and AI to test cards, take over accounts, abuse refunds, and probe weak defenses at scale.

The takeaway: if you can’t see and control the payment lifecycle end to end, you’re playing defense with one hand tied behind your back. “Convenient” becomes “vulnerable” when a single third party controls both your merchant identity and your fraud posture.

 

Resilience, predictability, and donor confidence

For nonprofits, successful results aren’t gained simply by reducing fraud losses. Success lives in the operational outcomes that keep your mission funded and your supporters engaged. When you combine ownership of your merchant account with modern fraud protection, you’re aiming at outcomes like:

More predictable cash flow: Fewer surprise holds, fewer payout mysteries, and fewer lastminute scrambles to reconcile what cleared. When failure scenarios do occur—nonsufficient fund returns, expired cards, or bank issues—you can layer in services such as automated recovery and card-on-file updating to reduce involuntary churn and keep recurring gifts on track.

Better donor experience: Fewer unnecessary declines, fewer confusing error messages, and donation flows that feel fast, mobile-friendly, and trustworthy. Supporters can give using the methods they prefer—cards, ACH/eCheck, digital wallets, or recurring monthly gifts—without running a gauntlet of clumsy fraud checks.

Stronger governance: Clearer accountability for payment operations, reporting, and oversight. As regulations and platform rules tighten, you can show boards, auditors, and major donors that you understand where money flows, how it’s protected, and how quickly issues are identified and escalated.

Protection that scales: As donor volumes grow and campaigns expand, your payment platform should support high-volume, low-latency monitoring with always-adapting models and configurable thresholds. That means your fraud defenses can keep pace as your supporter base and fundraising channels grow—without requiring a proportional increase in manual review work.

The nonprofit sector doesn’t need more cautionary tales to prove the point. The urgency is already here: fraud is rising, regulation is tightening, and donation interruptions tend to hit at the worst possible time.

 

Rethinking the foundation, not just the form

At a glance, donation pages and buttons may all look similar. The critical difference lies underneath:

  • Who is the merchant of record? Is it you or a third-party platform?
  • Where do funds actually sit between authorization and settlement?
  • Who is responsible for fraud monitoring, compliance, and payout decisions?
  • How quickly can you adapt if a processor, platform, or bank changes course?

If your fundraising platform can’t give you clear answers on ownership, transparency, and modern fraud defense—or if the answers leave you exposed—it’s time to rethink the foundation, not just the form.

That doesn’t have to mean abandoning the tools your team loves. It does mean adopting a payments architecture where your organization owns the merchant account, has end-to-end visibility into the payment lifecycle, and can layer in AI-powered fraud protection that fits your risk posture and mission.

If you want to pressure-test your current setup, CSG Forte can help you:

  • Map where donations and monthly gifts actually travel today.
  • Identify single points of failure in payout flows and processor relationships.
  • Evaluate your fraud controls across ACH, card, and digital channels.

Talk with CSG Forte about setting up a dedicated merchant account for your nonprofit to protect supporter gifts, strengthen your cash flow, and keep your mission moving, even when the landscape is changing around you.