JP Morgan Chase scoops up InstaMed, but the healthcare-tech company isn’t leaving Philly

Financial firm J.P. Morgan Chase announced Friday it’s acquiring Philadelphia-based healthcare payment company InstaMed for a reported $500 million.

InstaMed, an electronic payment company that aims to streamline healthcare reimbursements, has been in Philadelphia since 2004, after both of its cofounders left Accenture to start the healthcare-tech venture.

Although J.P. Morgan is New York-based, InstaMed has no intentions of abandoning its Center City office which employs nearly 200 people, VP of Strategy Deirdre Ruttle told Technical.ly.

About another hundred employees are based at the company’s Newport Beach, California office.

No staff reductions are expected, Ruttle said.

While neither company announced the price of the transaction, CNBC reported the deal is worth around $500 million. That price makes it J.P. Morgan’s largest acquisition since the financial crisis in 2008, Philadelphia Business Journal reported.

J.P. Morgan said InstaMed’s centralized payment platform addresses many of the challenges the healthcare payment industry faces: The company’s work eliminates paper, improves the consumer financial experience and reduces costs to collect payments.

“We set out to simplify healthcare payments for all stakeholders,” Bill Marvin, InstaMed’s president and CEO, said of the company’s inception on its website.

In the 15 years since the company was started, InstaMed’s found local investors in Bala Cynwyd-based investment firm Osage Ventures and early-stage capital provider Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

The healthcare-tech company has also since launched an annual user conference, which last year drew Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, who told conference-goers that he’s not too impressed or intimidated by today’s artificial intelligence programs.

Marvin said in a statement that the J.P. Morgan Chase acquisition excites him.

“Together, we will be able to invest in and expand the InstaMed Network, accelerate our consumer reach, and deepen our commitment to innovation,” Marvin said.

J.P. Morgan said traditional healthcare billing can be inefficient, adding that the industry is “slow to modernize.”

Takis Georgakopoulos, J.P. Morgan’s global head of wholesale payments, called the deal a “natural fit.”

“With InstaMed, we combine the strength and scale of J.P. Morgan Chase’s payments capabilities with a leading healthcare payments solution for consumers, providers and payers,” Georgakopoulos said. “The InstaMed team is passionate about delivering an excellent client experience with a focus on innovation, keeping data safe and secure, and simplifying the end-to-end healthcare payments process.”