The best payment partner is the one you don't see.

What providers consistently want from payment experiences comes down to three things:

• Speed. Faster payments mean shorter revenue cycles and improved cash flow. With consumers using digital methods every day, slow payments feel increasingly outdated.
• Security. Eliminating paper checks reduces cost and the risk of loss, theft, and fraud. Digital payments add encryption, verification, and compliance protections that physical checks cannot match.
• Convenience. Fewer manual steps and simpler processes benefit both sides of the transaction. Plus, when full remittance data accompanies each payment, reconciliation becomes exponentially easier.

When health plans get payments right, providers notice. When they get them wrong, the whole network feels it.

Here's what health plans, dental plans, and TPAs need to understand:

• The fee structure matters to providers. Virtual cards are processed on credit card rails, which means providers pay interchange fees, typically 1–3% of the payment amount. For high-volume providers, this adds up quickly. When providers feel they have no choice but to accept a fee-laden payment method, trust erodes.
• Transparency is a differentiator. Health plans that are upfront about how virtual card programs work, including fee structures and available alternatives, consistently achieve better provider relationships and higher digital adoption rates.
• Choice is the answer. Providers should be able to elect their preferred payment method, including no-cost EFT/ACH options. When genuine choice exists, providers who prefer virtual cards can opt in, and those who prefer EFT can avoid fees entirely.

Read how virtual cards give health plans more control over cash flow, cost savings, and revenue. →

Reducing provider abrasion starts with understanding what a truly frictionless experience looks like:

• Multiple electronic payment methods including ACH/direct deposit, virtual cards, digital checks, and paper checks when required. These options should run automatically and include no-cost options for providers. Equally important, electronic remittance information should be delivered at no cost and in easy, integrated formats within provider accounting systems.
• One unified system for both payment and remittance tracking, which simplifies provider workflows, reduces errors, and accelerates payment cycles.

Providers who know exactly when they'll be paid, in their preferred method, with complete remittance data, stop calling. They stop complaining. They also stay in network, which is the outcome that matters most.

The health plans providers want to work with have one thing in common: they pay well. Here are four ways to be one of them →

For health plans, the practical implication is this: a larger, more connected network means fewer enrollment hurdles, faster digital payment adoption, and less provider friction from day one. A smaller network means more manual exceptions, more paper workarounds, and more staff time managing the gap.

ECHO connects to 1.6M+ providers and vendors and achieves 90%+ digital payment adoption on day one. That's the network effect working in your favor, from the start.

Not all payment methods carry the same risk, and the differences are significant enough to inform how health plans structure their payment programs.

• Paper checks carry the highest fraud risk of any payment method and are 31x more likely to be targeted than real-time payment rails.
• ACH/EFT is significantly more secure than paper. Transactions are processed through regulated banking rails with strong authentication requirements. The risk is primarily at the enrollment stage, making robust identity verification essential.
• Virtual cards offer strong transaction-level security. Each card number is unique to a single transaction, making card data theft far less valuable to fraudsters. The primary risk, as with ACH, is in enrollment and account management.
• Real-time payments offer the lowest fraud rates of any rail, but speed cuts both ways. Transactions that clear instantly are also harder to recall once fraud is detected, making pre-transaction verification critical.

Healthcare payment compliance is a moving target. The organizations that manage compliance most effectively don't build it piecemeal. They partner with payment infrastructure providers that have already solved it at scale.

For health plans evaluating payment partners, the compliance question should go beyond "are you HIPAA compliant?" The more important questions are:

• How do you handle 1099 reporting at scale?
• What does your HITRUST and SOC 2 posture look like?
• How do your controls adapt when regulations change?
• What audit documentation do you provide?

1. Unified payment infrastructure with end-to-end visibility. A unified payment infrastructure reduces entry points and provides clear, end-to-end visibility into each transaction.
2. Continuous identity and account verification. A resilient payment program pairs rigorous onboarding controls with continuous identity and account verification.
3. Real-time monitoring and early-signal detection. Real-time monitoring enables organizations to identify anomalies as they form, not after payments clear.
4. Centralized controls for compliance, auditability, and governance. A fraud-resilient payment solution centralizes governance so consistent rules, regulatory logic, and audit trails apply across the entire payment lifecycle.
5. Secure digital payment options. Secure digital payment options reduce exposure by operating within modern, traceable, and controllable environments.

Modern fraud prevention is a collaboration between intelligent systems and people who can interpret and act on their insights.

This is what makes a multi-layered defense essential. Automation provides reach and consistency across every transaction, while human expertise brings context, discernment, and the ability to weigh operational impact. Governance binds these layers together by standardizing responses, aligning teams, and ensuring decisions reinforce security over time rather than rely on individual judgment calls.

For health plans specifically, reducing fraud exposure in provider payments means applying this multi-layered approach at the points where fraud most commonly enters:

• Enrollment: Verify banking credentials at onboarding and monitor continuously for account changes. Fraudulent payees are most often introduced during this stage.
• Paper elimination: Every check eliminated is a fraud vector removed.
• Network-level intelligence: At network scale, fraud detection fundamentally changes. Patterns emerge that no single organization could see alone. Behaviors that appear routine in isolation stand out when measured against network-wide trends, allowing fraud teams to identify new tactics earlier and with greater confidence.

Fraud tactics will continue to evolve, often in ways that test the limits of both technology and process. Organizations that invest in the right combination of systems, governance, and experienced analysts will be best positioned to adapt.

At its core, a modern healthcare payment solution is built on four pillars:

• Protection: Multi-layered fraud prevention, real-time monitoring, and built-in compliance controls that apply consistently across every payment type and transaction.
• Payment choice: Providers can elect their preferred payment method with no-cost options including ACH, EFT, virtual card, and digital check. Intelligent routing matches each payment to the right method automatically.
• Scale: A network large enough to drive meaningful digital adoption from day one.
• Integration: Effortless connection to existing claims, adjudication, and financial systems without requiring a major IT overhaul. The right solution fits into your workflow, not the other way around.

As one of the most powerful tools available today, the future of payments is being reshaped by automation and AI. Emerging technologies can automate accounts payable and receivable to drastically reduce manual errors, improve cash flow management, and accelerate the payment cycle.

In medical and dental specifically, $193 billion in annual industry costs were avoided by automating administrative processes, and the industry is working to automate more. Generative AI and machine learning technologies are being leveraged to identify payment trends, predict cash flow needs, and detect fraudulent activity in real time.

Read the five ways AI is reshaping payment operations →

A payment solution's value directly connects to its network reach and ability to drive digital adoption. For health plans, connectivity translates directly into outcomes:

• Increased digital adoption: When your payment solution already has existing relationships with your providers, digital enrollment happens faster and with less friction.
• Reduced paper and exceptions: Every provider connected digitally is one fewer paper check to print, mail, reconcile, and reissue. At scale, this transforms the economics of payment operations.
• Better fraud intelligence: A larger, more connected network generates richer transaction data. That data powers better pattern recognition, earlier fraud detection, and smarter payment routing.
• Stronger provider relationships: Providers who can be paid through their preferred method, from day one, without a complicated enrollment process, are providers who trust your payment operations.

The key is selecting a solution pre-built for integration, and not one that requires your systems to adapt to it. The right solution connects to your existing claims and adjudication platform through standardized file formats, minimizing the development work required on your end.

By integrating payment workflows with ERP, accounting, and financial systems, organizations can scale operations, automate manual tasks, and enhance reporting capabilities with minimal effort from IT teams.

With an integrated solution, the change to the provider experience is nearly invisible: same payments, same timing, and the same remittance data delivered more efficiently and through their preferred method.

These nine capabilities separate the solutions that can deliver from those that only promise:

1. Seamless implementation and integration: Can they connect to your existing claims platform without a major IT overhaul?
2. Network connectivity and digital adoption: How many providers are already connected? What digital adoption rate can they achieve on day one?
3. Provider payment flexibility and satisfaction: Do providers get genuine payment choice, including no-cost options?
4. Security, compliance, and fraud prevention: What does their compliance posture look like across HIPAA, NACHA, HITRUST, SOC 2, and PCI? How do they handle fraud prevention?
5. Financial impact and operational efficiencies: Can they quantify the savings? What does the ROI look like at your volume?
6. 1099 and tax compliance: Do they own 1099 reporting, or does that burden stay with you?
7. Reporting and visibility: What real-time data and analytics do they provide across all payment types?
8. Scalability: Can they grow with you, new payment methods, new lines of business, new regulatory requirements?
9. Partnership and proven ROI: Before you sign, can they show projected savings with a no-cost analysis of your own payment data?