Payments are the key to effective healthcare subscriptions

By Mathilde Sarfas, strategy manager, and Amr Sultan, senior strategy manager

With 2025 being the year of the subscription-based healthcare model, where does it work best and what does it take to implement it successfully?

With an industrywide shift toward preventive care, patient-centered delivery and wellbeing, subscription healthcare is trending up because it places the consumer in control.

Although 67% of digital health decision-makers see it as an effective payment solution, subscription care is still a niche model that thrives in areas where care is ongoing, consumer-driven and digitally administered.

Four high-engagement segments

We’re seeing the subscription model gain traction in high-engagement, direct-to-consumer categories:

• Always-on support through virtual primary care: Patients benefit from predictability and convenience, while clinicians and providers benefit from stable recurring revenue.
• Mental health support online: Therapy, coaching and digital self-care tools can be made available regularly or on an ad-hoc basis, well-suited to monthly or tiered subscriptions.
• Weight management: With GLP-1 medications on the rise, some platforms bundle prescriptions with coaching and progress tracking. These services often fall outside traditional insurance coverage and appeal to wellness-focused, self-paying users.
• Dermatology: Chronic skin concerns may require regular check-ins and medication refills, suited to recurring fulfilment.

In each of these, regular engagement with the service improves outcomes; patients can pay directly; and the scope of care is clearly defined, making them ideal areas for recurring treatment and payment.

Barriers to broader adoption

Subscriptions may not be an obvious fit for certain types of care. Episodic or one-time treatments like surgeries or acute interventions have little need for recurring payments. Additionally, older demographics may be slower to adopt digital health services.

Furthermore, understanding regulatory and compliance needs can be complex. For newer digital health companies still defining their operations, scaling long-term subscriptions and delivery may feel challenging.

These barriers don’t mean subscriptions can’t work outside their current niches. Building a viable model requires aligning the clinical, operational and experiential pieces from the ground up, including how people pay.

Digital healthcare providers can ask the following questions to help determine if subscriptions are right for them:

• Does your model naturally fit monthly or tiered billing?
• Do you have the capacity to deliver ongoing and consistent support?
• Are your end users likely to self-finance or have recurrent access to your service as part of their employee benefits?
• Can you articulate the recurring value and price point of your service to users?

Building trust and removing friction

The more aligned the care you deliver is with patient expectations, the more likely your model will drive long-term engagement and retention.

This begins with easy onboarding, helping patients understand how to get access to the service and the value they get from it. It continues through regular digital engagement, whether nudges, helpful content users want to read, and reminders between appointments or deliveries. It’s then reinforced by consistently high-quality service and responsive support, including on scheduling, dose changes and account issues.

These points of contact are crucial to maintaining patient satisfaction. While each platform may approach these elements differently, those who invest in smoother, patient-centric experiences tend to reduce churn and improve retention.

Payments reduce churn

Payment infrastructure plays a crucial role in sustaining subscription models, especially in healthcare, where disruption can lead to gaps in treatment. This undermines trust and can compromise patient outcomes. According to Chargebee, failed payments are the top reason for losing subscribers.

Several levers can help drive payments success for healthcare providers:

• Always prioritize user experience. A clean and intuitive sign-up experience can reduce friction, particularly for new users making time-sensitive decisions about their health.
• Offer multiple ways to pay, including digital wallets, account-to-account (A2A) payments and buy now, pay-later (BNPL) to give patients choice and flexibility.
• Automatically update cards using Worldpay’s Account Updater, so expired cards don’t lead to payment failures.
• Use “smart retry” systems for failed payments. Retry logic automatically attempts to process a payment again after a soft decline (such as a temporary card issue). This helps recover revenue without requiring patient action and avoids service disruption.
• Protect patients’ data. Solutions like tokenization – which replaces sensitive card details with secure, non-exploitable tokens – can significantly reduce the risk of fraud. Combined with encryption and PCI DSS compliance, these tools help to ensure payment security and build patient trust.

Getting payments right can improve conversion, retention and patient satisfaction.

For healthcare companies aiming to expand, subscriptions represent an effective long-term strategy. Those who consider the entire journey – including payments – as part of the care experience may find they can retain patients longer, while generating ongoing revenue that enables greater innovation and success.

Find out more about how Worldpay can support subscriptions and healthcare payments, learn about our payments optimization tools, or get in touch.