Cedar vs PayZen
Two Patient Payments & Billing vendors, side by side. Facts from public sources; judgments are ours.
At a glance
Derived from public facts · a rough scale, not a ranking
| Cedar | PayZen | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Percent of collections · SaaS base plus 1-4% of collections | Percent of collections · Provider pays discount on funded patient balances |
| Speed to go live | Deep EHR and billing system integration | Live in about four weeks, no IT costs claimed |
| Automation model | Software platform · Consumer-grade patient billing experience | Tech-enabled service · AI-underwritten patient financing |
| Built for | Enterprise systems | Mid-size groups, Enterprise systems |
| Security posture | SOC 2 Type II, HITRUST, HIPAA | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA |
| Company maturity | 10 yrs (est. 2016) | 7 yrs (est. 2019) |
| Financial backing | $350M+ · Series D | $230M+ incl. debt facilities · Series B |
| Named customers | 5 named | 3 named |
| Published results | Specific numbers public | Specific numbers public |
| Documented integrations | 1 listed | 2 listed |
| Third-party validation | None found | KLAS / analyst cited |
Bottom line
- Pick Cedar if you are a large health system leaking self-pay revenue and want a consumer-grade billing experience with fees tied partly to collections lift.
- Pick PayZen if patient balances are turning into bad debt and you want non-recourse financing that pays you upfront while patients pay zero interest.
Cedar
Consumer-grade patient billing for health systems
- Founded
- 2016
- HQ
- New York, NY
- Stage
- Series D
- Raised
- $350M+
What it does
- Consolidated digital patient billing and payment experience
- Personalized outreach and payment options driven by ML
- Kora AI voice agent answers inbound billing calls
- Bill explanations and coverage context inside the bill
- Delivers billing inside Epic MyChart
Where it's strong
- The category leader for patient financial experience at large health systems, with reference customers like Novant and Yale New Haven and 300,000+ patient interactions a day.
- Deep Epic and MyChart integration means the experience shows up where patients already are, not in yet another portal.
- Its 2025 agentic AI line (Kora, Bill Navigator, Agent Copilot) attacks call center cost, projecting 30% of inbound billing calls automated.
What buyers should weigh
- Built for large health systems and physician enterprises; small and mid-size groups are not the target and should look at Collectly or similar.
- Commercial terms typically scale with patient payment volume, so model the effective take rate against your current cost to collect.
- It improves the patient-facing layer but is not a full RCM replacement; your billing stack stays.
Named customers
Novant Health · Yale New Haven Health · ChristianaCare · Summit Health/CityMD · ApolloMD
Integrations
PayZen
Affordability platform with pay-over-time for care
- Founded
- 2019
- HQ
- San Francisco, CA
- Stage
- Series B
- Raised
- $230M+ incl. debt facilities
What it does
- AI underwrites every patient for an affordable plan
- Zero-interest, no-fee installment plans for patients
- Pays providers upfront and takes on repayment risk
- Care Now, Pay Later financing before treatment
- Embedded in Epic and other EHR billing workflows
Where it's strong
- Converts aging self-pay balances into upfront cash for the health system while patients get zero-interest plans, a genuinely different model from statement optimization vendors.
- Approves every patient regardless of credit, which protects the patient experience and avoids the reputational problems of medical credit cards.
- Serious capital behind it: an NEA-led Series B with $200M in credit warehouse capacity, plus about 60 health system and physician group clients including Geisinger and CommonSpirit.
What buyers should weigh
- The provider pays for the upfront cash through program economics, so model the effective discount against your current self-pay recovery rate.
- It addresses affordability and financing, not the whole billing experience; many systems pair it with a broader engagement platform.
- Patient financing is credit-adjacent and drawing regulatory attention, so review compliance, disclosures, and collection practices carefully.
Named customers
Geisinger · CommonSpirit Health · Appalachian Regional Healthcare System
Integrations
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