Challenge

Dr. Thomas Kelly experienced firsthand the time constraints placed on healthcare practitioners by all of the documentation and administrative work they are required to complete. He and his cofounders built Heidi with the goal of helping clinicians streamline their documentation so they could get back to focusing on patient care. Launched in early 2024, the Melbourne-based company’s AI medical scribe transcribes conversations between medical doctors and patients without storing the audio—a critical feature to comply with patient privacy regulations and standards.

The founder’s vision was that Heidi would operate seamlessly all over the world. To meet that goal, the small company faced a series of challenges, including the need for a scalable payments solution that would allow them to focus on product development without allocating limited resources to an on-the-ground sales team. Heidi needed to launch quickly in new markets while still meeting the different compliance standards for health practitioners across various regions, as well as working in different currencies and tax regimes. To expand, the company would need to charge users in their local currencies via an online payment system, as well as invoice customers accurately all over the world.

The company also needed flexibility in how it managed subscriptions. Dr. Kelly and his team wanted to make it easy for individual doctors to use the app for a set price without having to worry about getting charged more every time they used it. But they knew that some larger institutions, such as hospitals, preferred a usage-based subscription model.

Solution

When Heidi first decided to monetize its AI medical scribe platform, the team looked at multiple vendors before deciding to launch with Stripe. “Two of the main factors in our vendor evaluation process were developer experience and efficiency,” said Dr. Kelly. “We value those a lot.”

With their goal of pursuing cross-border sales in local currencies in mind, Dr. Kelly and his team implemented Stripe Payments along with the Optimized Checkout Suite. To tailor the payment experience to each of Heidi’s customers, AI models built into the Optimized Checkout Suite determine which payment methods to display, and in what order, for each individual checkout. The team could easily enable a variety of payment methods at the click of a button, all around the world, including BECS Direct Debit in Australia. To help improve conversion, they also enabled Link, a wallet built by Stripe that autofills customer payment information to create a secure and easy checkout experience.

When Heidi launched, the 12-person team wanted practitioners to have access to a flat-fee billing model that offered multiple tiers. They implemented Stripe Billing to help manage the subscriptions, while also maintaining the flexibility to offer usage-based pricing models for select clients, including complex enterprise healthcare contracts.

The Australia-based team implemented Stripe Tax to automatically address local tax and compliance challenges across the countries where Heidi operates.

Results

Heidi achieves 15x year-on-year growth after fast implementation

Dr. Kelly and team were able to get the platform up and running quickly; in total, setting up Payments and the Optimized Checkout Suite, along with Billing and Invoicing, took the team just two to three days. “We were already familiar with Stripe from when we were involved with previous projects outside of Heidi, so implementation was relatively easy,” said Dr. Kelly.

This speed to market helped the company achieve 15x year-on-year growth in revenue after monetization.

Heidi expands into 116+ countries around the world

Stripe’s integrated product suite has helped Heidi juggle the complexities of cross-border commerce, enabling it to expand into core markets in the US, Canada, the UK, and New Zealand, along with more than 30 additional markets. With Stripe’s help, Heidi now has a unified view of all its global revenue.

Heidi achieves 97%+ payment success rate

With Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite, Heidi has improved its payment processing efficiency. Authorization Boost delivered a 2.44% improvement in payment success rate, helping the company achieve a 97%+ payment success rate overall.

This higher authorization rate directly impacts Heidi’s bottom line by reducing lost revenue from failed transactions and improving the customer experience.

Localizing the product in a German marketplace takes just half a day

When the company launched a pilot in Germany, it took just half a day to update its checkout experience, including language and currency, to meet local expectations. Overall, the time to expand into new markets reduced from months to weeks.

“Stripe gives us a utility belt of options, so we can launch in a new country without having to answer questions about payments and product mechanics,” said Dr. Kelly.