SEB, Everyday People Team Up on Healthcare Mastercard for Canadian SMBs

InsurTech SEB Administrative Services has teamed up with consumer financing firm Everyday People to launch a healthcare spending account Mastercard aimed at small businesses in Canada, the companies said in a news release Tuesday (May 31).

“Healthcare spending accounts help business owners save on medical costs by turning an after-tax personal medical expense into a before-tax business expense,” the release said.

The companies said the health spending account is applicable especially when it comes to smaller businesses and self-employed business owners, a population that includes more than 15 million employees and 2.5 million gig workers in Canada.

SEB and Everyday People say the health spending account — unique to the Canadian marketplace — is particularly applicable to small companies and self-employed business owners. There are over 1.2 million small businesses in Canada, accounting for over 97% of all businesses in Canada. These small businesses represent over 15 million employees and 2.5 million gig workers.

The two companies said they are the first to introduce this integrated membership-based employee healthcare spending account and card program to the marketplace. The program represents an opportunity to capture part of Canada’s $8 billion HSA market, with the goal of capturing a minimum 20% market share.

Mohamad El Chayah, COO of SEB and president & CEO of SEB Administrative Services, said the program will “streamline operations, increase accuracy and boost efficiency, and offers employees a reduction of out-of-pocket burden and costs normally associated with traditional health spending accounts.”

See also: PayGround Partners with Plastiq on Digital Wallet, Health Payments

Other recent partnerships in this sector include last month’s collaboration between the health tech company PayGround and Plastiq, a payments platform, to expand how patients pay their medical bills. The agreement lets patients pay medical providers with their credit, debit or flexible spending and health savings account cards card using the PayGround mobile app.

“Making healthcare payments to multiple providers is a fact of life for most people, and it can get complicated. But it shouldn’t be,” said PayGround CEO and co-founder Drew Mercer in a statement. “We designed the app to make it easy to securely store payment methods within a PayGround Digital Wallet, so they can be easily accessed again in the future.”