Payment gateway and card processing for telehealth providers with a Georgian company

We arrange direct payment gateway and card processing relationships for telehealth providers that use a Georgian corporate structure. Our process begins with a review of your clinical model, target patient markets, and patient checkout experience. We analyse your existing payment methods and help define a strategy that blends card payments with any required alternative payment methods (APMs) for specific regions.

Based on your model, we identify the appropriate gateway type that supports the acquiring banks your profile can access. We then help define the integration scope, clarifying PCI DSS requirements and specifying the 3-D Secure and fraud prevention tools needed to manage risk. For telehealth, this often involves rules that target subscription billing and first-time patient transactions.

Our team prepares the onboarding file for submission to the gateway and its underlying acquirers, ensuring your clinician licensing, prescribing policies, and data handling processes are clearly documented. We then coordinate the technical integration and go-live. Finally, we assist in planning your transaction routing and cascading rules, ensuring that a single acquirer decline does not interrupt your ability to accept patient payments.

Gateway compliance teams and their acquiring partners focus on five key areas when underwriting a Georgian telehealth provider. First, they examine the proposed technical integration and its resulting PCI DSS scope. They need to understand how card data will be captured and transmitted, whether via a hosted payment page, API, or other method.

Second, they scrutinise traffic sources and marketing claims to ensure you are not making unsubstantiated medical assertions or targeting patients in jurisdictions where your clinicians are not licensed. Third, they review proposed billing descriptors to confirm they are clear and reduce the risk of chargebacks from confused patients.

Fourth, underwriters assess your fraud controls, particularly your implementation of 3-D Secure (3DS). For telehealth, they expect to see dynamic 3DS rules applied based on transaction risk, especially for recurring subscription payments which are common in the industry. Finally, they analyse your target markets to ensure they align with the gateway’s and acquirer’s geographical risk appetite. Your file must demonstrate that your practices are lawful, licensed, and transparent.

Using a Georgian LLC for your telehealth business has specific implications for your payment gateway application. While Georgia offers fast company registration, often within two days, providers need to see evidence of substance. A local director or a clear operational presence strengthens the file, showing commitment beyond a simple registration. Unlike a jurisdiction such as Estonia, where digital residency is the norm, Georgian-based applications benefit from demonstrating a tangible link to the country.

The National Bank of Georgia (NBG) oversees financial services, but most payment gateways and acquirers you access will be licensed internationally. Your file must include your Georgian company’s registry extract and charter. While the primary currency is the Lari (GEL), your business will almost certainly process in USD and EUR, so your gateway and acquiring partners must be able to settle in these currencies.

Georgian corporate income tax is only levied on distributed profits, which is an attractive feature for reinvesting in growth. However, underwriters will expect to see that you are fulfilling all monthly and annual tax filing obligations. We ensure your corporate documents are properly presented to meet the standards of international payment providers.

Payment gateways for telehealth providers are often declined or later terminated for predictable reasons. The most common is a failure to verify clinician licensing for all jurisdictions served. Acquirers will not support a business that appears to be providing medical advice or prescriptions in a country where its staff are not legally permitted to practice. Your application must proactively document the credentials for every doctor or therapist on the platform.

Another major issue is the sale of regulated or controlled medications without the proper authority. Our process explicitly vets your prescribing policy to ensure it complies with the regulations in your target markets. We do not place businesses involved with controlled substances unless they hold all necessary specific licences.

Weak data protection is also a frequent cause for rejection. Telehealth platforms handle sensitive patient health information, and underwriters must see a robust data protection policy compliant with standards like GDPR or HIPAA, depending on your patient base. Finally, high chargeback ratios, often stemming from unclear subscription billing terms or service disputes, can lead to account closure. We help you structure your checkout flow and billing descriptors to minimise this risk from the start.

For a Georgian-registered telehealth company, establishing a new payment gateway typically takes one to four weeks once the underlying acquiring relationships are approved and in place. The gateway onboarding itself is primarily a technical and compliance exercise. The first step involves submitting the file we prepare, which includes your corporate and licensing documentation, to the gateway’s compliance team.

Once compliance approves the file, the technical integration phase begins. Your development team will receive API keys and sandbox credentials to connect your platform to the gateway. We help coordinate this process to ensure the integration meets the required specifications for security and transaction processing. After successful testing, the gateway is moved to a live production environment.

To maintain a healthy gateway account, it is essential to keep your processing activity consistent with what was described in your application. Any significant changes to your business model, such as adding new services, expanding into high-risk jurisdictions, or changing your prescribing policies, should be communicated to your payment partners in advance. Proactive communication and diligent chargeback management are the keys to a stable, long-term processing relationship.