Bank of America (BAC 3.48%) is becoming more heavily involved in the healthcare payment technology segment with its latest acquisition, that of privately held Axia Technologies. In its announcement of the deal Monday, the lender did not disclose the price it is paying for the new asset.
Axia, which is also known as AxiaMed, is a company formed in 2015 that concentrates on secure digital payment solutions for medical service providers. Its core offering is a software solution that, in Bank of America's words, allows "many healthcare providers to offer end-to-end, omni-channel patient payment solutions."
"Working together, we can leverage our joint expertise and capabilities to deliver a comprehensive range of payment and settlement solutions to our healthcare clients and their patients," the bank quoted its head of enterprise payments Mark Monaco as saying.
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Bank of America is determined to leverage its experience and know-how to build a proprietary digital payments platform. The company had previously collaborated with First Data, now a subsidiary of Fiserv (FI 0.90%), in a joint venture called Banc of America Merchant Services focused on such activities, but this entity was dissolved in 2019.
While AxiaMed is a specialist in only one segment of digital commerce, it's an important corner of the market. The U.S. population is aging, and consequently, demand for medical services should rise notably in the coming years and decades. Assuming the bank can integrate AxiaMed successfully with its other digital payment operations, it has the potential to be a good revenue source for its new owner.
On Monday, Bank of America's shares closed 0.8% higher, several steps behind the 1.4% increase of the S&P 500 index.
