AI-powered Buy-Now-Pay-Later Smart Contracts in Healthcare

The paper investigates current and future pricing models in the European healthcare sector. European countries follow a universal healthcare system, whereas the United States rely on a mix of private insurers, government programmes, and private payments. It is becoming obvious that the European “free” healthcare systems are not sustainable in the long run. The authors propose a private Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) alternative. BNPL is common practice in retailing but highly unusual in healthcare. The authors suggest to enhancing BNPL further by adding AI and blockchain/crypto technology. However, there are three hurdles to overcome, namely, cryptocurrency volatility, regulatory uncertainty, and adoption barriers. Our field research investigated the acceptance barriers especially whether European medical service providers would accept cryptocurrency payments and the BNPL model in general. Our survey is based on 366 European medical service providers, mainly medical doctors. The results show that there is willingness to accept cryptocurrencies. As recommendation we outline how a fully integrated AI-powered BNPL model with cryptocurrency payments and smart contracts including BNPL Tokenisation in a decentralised financial market could work to the benefit of all stakeholders.