CT Payer and Highnote Launch Payment Card to Modernize Study Participant Compensation

While clinical trials and other health-related research studies are crucial for advancing healthcare, they can burden volunteers with time constraints, transportation costs, and childcare expenses. To address these barriers, more and more studies are offering compensation. However, traditional methods like paper checks are often inefficient and insecure. Today, Highnote proudly announces our card launch with CT Payer, an online payment solution tailored for study participant compensation. Together, we are streamlining the payment process, making it more secure, convenient, and efficient than ever before.

Currently, the largest clinical trial units conduct up to 100 studies each year, with the average trial requiring three to five payments per patient and as many as 1,000 patients in a trial. This makes the administrative burden of coordinating and tracking participant payments significant. CT Payer understood this long ago, launching its first product into the market in 2010. But as the business shifted and expanded, CT Payer decided it needed a card partner that would allow it to better address increasing demand. Highnote, with our cloud-based infrastructure and rapid speed-to-market capabilities, was up to the task.

“We needed to change card managers as the business scaled,” says CT Payer CEO and founder Mike Nevin. “We were initially concerned since this can be an arduous process, rife with the potential for errors. Luckily, the implementation team at Highnote made the migration seamless. I’ve never felt so confident in a card partner. Now, we can truly focus on our mission to help our customers succeed by providing the most innovative, compliant, cost-effective, and user-friendly clinical trial and study-related payment solutions.”

With this migration, CT Payer can enjoy the benefits of partnering with the card platform that is setting the new standard in modern card issuance, including:

- Bulk Card Ordering: Research studies can often include thousands of participants. Unlike other card partners, which typically limit shipments to certain batch amounts, Highnote’s unique structure makes it easy for cards to be issued and shipped in bulk.

- Unique Hierarchies: Highnote’s flexible funds flow allows CT Payer to segment their account structures by customer, study, department, and location. Customers with hundreds of locations and thousands of participants to manage can do so seamlessly with CT Payer.

- Programmable Payments: Highnote’s APIs allow for cards to be easily turned off, on, reloaded, and tailored for approval for certain categories, depending on the different needs of each study and its timeline.

- Program Management: From negotiating banking partnerships to ensuring compliance to ideating card design, Highnote’s experienced team ensures the complexities of managing card programs are executed without a heavy operational burden on CT Payer.

Our own CEO, John MacIlwaine, has this to say about the partnership: “Highnote is thrilled to join CT Payer at the forefront of innovation in clinical trial compensation, and I’m incredibly proud of what our team has accomplished. Migrations are never easy, but when dealing with a subject as big and complex as clinical trials and study-related payments, they can be utterly frustrating. It’s a testament to CT Payer that their customers stayed committed to them through this migration. But it’s also a credit to my team that CT Payer’s customers experienced as little pain as possible throughout this process.”

In eliminating barriers for volunteers and modernizing payments, CT Payer and Highnote can ensure a broader population is included in research studies, driving advancements in the life science industry. The power of embedded finance, and particularly Highnote’s flexible, customizable platform, can revolutionize the payment experience, not only transforming compensation methods but also empowering organizations to conduct more impactful and diverse clinical trials and other health-related research studies. Together, we are shaping the future of clinical research by providing a secure, efficient, and user-friendly compensation solution.

If you’d like to see how your company can benefit from Highnote’s modern issuing platform, get in touch.