BofA Acquires Health-Care Tech Startup Axia in Payments Push

(Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. acquired the health-care technology company Axia Technologies Inc. as the financial giant continues to build out its products for helping merchants take payments.

The deal for the startup, which does business as AxiaMed, comes on the heels of the bank’s decision to dissolve its merchant-services joint venture in favor of building a proprietary platform, Bank of America said Friday in a statement. Terms weren’t disclosed.

“Health care is super important to the bank,” Mark Monaco, head of enterprise payments at Bank of America, said in an interview. “What the AxiaMed acquisition does is really accelerate our road map within the health-care vertical.”

Banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Synchrony Financial have been looking to build out their payments offerings in health care, an area that still relies heavily on paper bills and checks. It can be tricky to move toward electronic payments because of the sensitive data that’s sometimes associated with medical transactions.

Bank of America opted to dissolve its longtime joint venture with Fiserv Inc.’s First Data last year. Since then, the bank has been building its own platform, which it says uses real-time payments and other digital technologies.

Friday’s deal “further demonstrates the bank’s commitment to payments and the commitment to building a top-flight merchant-services offering for our clients,” Monaco said. “It’s another step in the journey.”

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