Cherry Technologies
“Can a patient-financing platform become the dominant embedded credit layer for elective healthcare by combining near-universal approval rates with a program-manager model that keeps merchant fees structurally below legacy medical credit cards?”
Cherry Technologies launched in 2017 as a patient financing solution for healthcare providers, offering installment payment plans to patients for medical and aesthetic procedures. Rather than building its own bank charter, Cherry operates as a program manager, partnering with regulated lenders (Cross River Bank, and warehouse facility providers like Castlelake) to originate loans while Cherry handles the technology, underwriting workflow, and merchant network. The company has expanded from dental and chiropractic offices into med spas and broader elective healthcare, reaching 60,000+ provider partners and positioning Cherry's approval rate (~80–90%) and low merchant fees as competitive differentiators against incumbents like CareCredit.