Supporting All the Ways You Pay: Introducing FSA & HSA Payment Acceptance on Instacart

At Instacart, we’re focused on creating an affordable, accessible and convenient online shopping experience. Core to that experience is ensuring customers can pay using any benefits available to them – from SNAP and supplemental health benefits to Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and Instacart Health Fresh Funds. We want to give more families access to delivery from the more than 80,000 retail stores on our platform, helping them stretch their budgets by enabling multiple forms of payment. 

To help address this problem, we’re excited to announce that beginning December 4, customers can use their FSA and HSA cards at checkout to purchase items for delivery on the Instacart App, helping customers eliminate the need to manually submit receipts for reimbursement. 

Each year, millions of Americans enroll in FSA and HSA plans, setting aside pre-tax dollars for health expenses. While HSA funds do not expire, FSA funds typically expire at the end of the year. Given the “use it or lose it” nature of FSA funds, each year millions of consumers rush to spend these funds at the end of each year, only to be confronted with confusion about what’s covered and time-consuming reimbursement processes. Annually, Americans forfeit billions of dollars in unused FSA funds that could have been spent on essential everyday health items like bandaids, eye drops and more – in addition to wellness items like foam rollers and heating pads. Because of pre-tax savings, FSA and HSA funds allow customers to purchase their health essentials at up to a ~20-40% discount.

Today, many retailers don’t accept FSA/HSA cards as payment in-store, an obstacle that may prevent consumers from fully taking advantage of their funds. Through this new integration, Instacart will enable FSA and HSA payment acceptance from every retailer on the Instacart App that offers eligible products. Instacart serves more than 95% of North American households, offering same-day delivery from more than 1,400 retail banners.

Customers will be able to easily shop from eligible products – like acne face wash and high-quality sunscreen from a beauty retailer, or allergy medication, tampons and cold medicine from a local grocer or pharmacy – and use their FSA or HSA payment card at checkout for same-day delivery in as fast as an hour, all within the Instacart App:

• FSA and HSA Pop-Up: We’ve aggregated FSA- and HSA-eligible items across Instacart into the “FSA & HSA Shop” to make it easier to discover products. The FSA and HSA Pop-Up shop is available on the Instacart homepage with all items delivered from our retail partners.
• FSA and HSA-Eligible Product Tags: We’ve added in-app labels to qualifying items to help people more easily identify FSA- and HSA-eligible items as they shop. Consumers can also search FSA or HSA in the search bar to find eligible products. 

Introducing the Instacart Health Wallet

We’re also unveiling our vision for the Instacart Health Wallet. Through the Health Wallet, customers will be able to cover the cost of eligible items – using multiple, distinct benefit payment methods – on our platform. 

Grocery and over-the-counter benefits today exist to help families cover essential expenses to help improve their health and well-being. But identifying where you can use these benefits and understanding what they cover – as well as convenient access to retailers that accept them all – makes it difficult to use these benefits and leads to many going unused. 

With the Instacart Health Wallet, we’re seeking to change this, centralizing payment options, including SNAP and Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and other supplemental grocery and over-the-counter benefits, FSAs, HSAs and Instacart Health Fresh Funds. In the coming months, the Health Wallet will make it easy for consumers to apply eligible benefits to the eligible items in their cart – in a single order. This means families will be able to use all of the benefits available to them to help cover the costs of their groceries, household essentials and over-the-counter goods, lowering their out-of-pocket expenses.

With the Instacart Health Wallet and our new FSA and HSA payment integration, we’ll make it easier for customers to use all the benefits they have, making the entire shopping experience more convenient and more affordable. We believe that everyone should have access to the essentials they need, and we’re proud to take these additional steps in support of this goal. 

Sarah Mastrorocco

Author

Sarah Mastrorocco is Vice President and General Manager of Health for Instacart. A longtime Instacart veteran and leader, Sarah today oversees Instacart Health, designed to support businesses, nonprofits and consumers across three key areas: Nutrition Security, Making Healthier Choices Easier, and Food as Medicine. Sarah has played an integral role at Instacart since joining as the first member of the company’s business development team in 2014. During her tenure at Instacart, she’s taken on various leadership positions across Business Development, Account Management, and Catalog. Prior to this current role, Sarah oversaw and scaled Instacart’s Pickup business.