B2B Payment Firm Pliant Expands Into Insurance With Hi.health Acquisition

European B2B payment solution provider Pliant said Wednesday (April 16) that it acquired Austrian InsurTech company hi.health to gain that company’s insurance-specific expertise and to apply its own payment expertise to the insurance sector.

Hi.health will continue to operate independently, while using Pliant’s infrastructure to support its product offering: a digital interface between insurance carriers and customers that enables insured individuals to submit healthcare invoices and prescriptions for reimbursement via a mobile app, rather than having to pay upfront, the companies said in a Wednesday press release.

“Hi.health has developed an impressive solution at the intersection of FinTech and insurance,” Pliant CEO Malte Rau said in the release. “By embedding a payment option into the submission process, they are revolutionizing what has traditionally been a cumbersome reimbursement workflow and creating real value in the process.”

Sebastian Gruber, CEO and co-founder of hi.health, said in the release that the partnership with Pliant “allows us to think even bigger about our mission.”

“Together, we have the opportunity to transform financial processes in the insurance and healthcare industries — eliminating the cumbersome reimbursement procedures and significantly improving the experience for both users and healthcare providers,” Gruber said.

Pliant currently provides payment solutions to the travel, mobility and banking sectors, according to the release.

The company raised $19 million in a Series A extension led by PayPal Ventures that brought its total Series A financing to more than $53 million in April 2024.

Pliant said at the time that the new funding would allow it to expand beyond the European Union for the first time, starting with the U.K.

PayPal Ventures Partner Ashish Aggarwal said at the time in a press release: “Pliant has emerged as a leading player in B2B payments in continental Europe, thanks to its next-generation, multi-tenant credit card-as-a-service platform that allows easy integration via application programming interfaces or embedded user interfaces.”

Pliant’s offering of multicurrency capabilities in 11 different currencies enables clients to receive bills in the same currency they transact in, while addressing the diverse needs of European companies with subsidiaries in non-euro markets like the Nordics, Rau told PYMNTS in an interview posted in January 2024.