How can I set up my PathPay payment processing account?

Overview

Setting up your PathPay payment account in Pathpoint (Video)

Verifying your PathPay payment account in Ascend (Video)

Setting up your PathPay payment account in Pathpoint (Text and screenshots)

Verifying your PathPay payment account in Ascend (Text and screenshots)

FAQs

Additional Resources

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Pathpoint is the first in the E&S industry to offer a 100% digital payment method, called PathPay. PathPay is a digital payment experience for E&S insurance. Agencies can choose PathPay Insured or PathPay Agency to manage their billing through our online invoicing and payment process. Every agent using Pathpoint will need to set up a PathPay account to handle billing, and will need to choose from either PathPay Insured or PathPay Agency to handle payment processing on all accounts associated with that agent. Pathpoint has partnered with Ascend to handle digital payments and processing.

Watch this video to learn how to set up your PathPay account in Pathpoint:

1. In your dashboard, select the option to Finish Setting Up Your Profile, or click your name in the top right of the dashboard and select "Settings"

   

2. In the Billing section, click "Start payment account creation"

   

3. Enter the information necessary to create the payments account. Note that we need your agency's billing contact’s information, and NOT the information of the insured.

4. Choose PathPay Insured or Agency (insured means the agent will pay Pathpoint directly and agency means your agency will pay Pathpoint on the agent's behalf), and click Send.

5. Click Send. This first part is complete!

1. Open the email inbox of the email address you just entered into the billing information when you set up your PathPay account in Pathpoint. You should find an email coming from "support@useascend.com" that looks like this. Click Update Information in the email body.

   

2. Sign into your new Ascend account using the same email you used to create your PathPay account in Pathpoint.

3. If prompted, refer back to your email to find a one-time code, and enter it in.

4. Update your business and bank details accordingly and submit.

4. Go back to your agent information page in Pathpoint, where you initially set up your PathPay account and refresh. It should now say "Verified" in green in the Billing area.

Note that sometimes verification can take up to 72 hours. If you need to precipitate issuing coverage for your Insured, please reach out to our support team for help.

• As of 3/13/2023, Pathpoint no longer accepts checks as a form of payment. The various workflows pertaining to policy premium payment with small, non-admitted commercial insurance are very complicated. We don’t want our agency users to have to deal with funds in transit. To this end, we partnered with Ascend, an insurance payment platform, to ensure that our users have the fastest and easiest experience with collecting payment for policies bound with Pathpoint.

• Mailing a check directly to our Pathpoint office is inefficient and may not guarantee that payment will be received and disbursed in time according to carrier specifications/requirements. This is why we no longer accept checks as a form of payment at Pathpoint.

• The status of policy premium payment will not be found in Pathpoint. The agency’s billing contact will need to log into the Ascend platform to see the status on all policy premium payments. Once this is done, you can click on the “Pathpoint” row on the Ascend main dashboard, which will then expand a list of specific programs. Typically, a program is associated directly to a policy that is bound through Pathpoint.

• We will be working to improve the experience in this area in the future, but for now, all inquires related to premium payment, both for Insured and Agency PathPay accounts, should be redirected to the Ascend dashboard.

• Ascend is a modern, all-in-one payments solution purpose-built for insurance. Ascend automates insurance payments end-to-end — from billing to premium financing to distribution of commissions and carrier payables - Ascend simplifies it all.

• Ascend is also our insurance payments platform partner, and is pivotal to the PathPay experience. It is through Ascend’s technology that Insureds will receive an email with a checkout link for PathPay Insured accounts, for example. It’s the partner we use to facilitate collecting payment for policy premiums written with Pathpoint. If you have chosen a PathPay Agency billing type, you will receive invoices to your email inbox once subjectivities have been approved by our underwriting team. For more information about Ascend, please click here.

• If you are getting emails from Ascend, please respond promptly to them. Typically these emails are payment notifications, or set up notifications to finish verification of your PathPay account. Sometimes they can require immediate attention, such as a notice of cancellation due to non-payment. If you are not receiving any emails from Ascend at all but believe you should be, please reach out to our support team via live chat at Pathpoint.com.

• This ‘Billing’ section corresponds to the status of your PathPay account. If you see that the status is Unverified, and you see a button to create a payment account, it means you do not have a PathPay account configured. You will need to do this to ensure that you’re able to bind coverage with Pathpoint.

• If you see an Unverified status value but there is no option to create a payment account, this means that you have successfully created your PathPay account but have not yet verified it. This involves configuring additional account details, such as banking information, information about the agency, etc. all in the Ascend platform.

• If you need to log into the Ascend platform to complete verification, please click here. You will be asked to input the email that you used when you created the PathPay account. You will receive an email from the Ascend platform with a one-time code, which will allow you to log into the Ascend dashboard to finish account verification. More information can be found here.

• The information that we collect during PathPay account creation, such as the agency’s tax identification number, or TIN/FEIN, the business mailing address, etc., are necessary to ensure the fastest verification process possible for agencies working with Pathpoint. Please ensure to enter all the required information so Pathpoint may streamline the verification process for you to the best of our ability.

• Typically, the agency’s billing contact will simply be the individual who has the administrative capabilities required to collect policy premium payment for the business they write in Pathpoint. In some cases however, agencies have specific billing coordinators that handle financial operations. Whatever your situation is, please ensure that the email address and contact information provided is correctly attributed to whoever at your agency is responsible for billing.

• This individual will receive an email to their inbox upon PathPay account creation to finish verification in the Ascend portal. If the verification process is not finished in the Ascend portal, Pathpoint users will not be able to request to bind policies. The agency’s billing contact will be responsible for being the administrator of the PathPay account through Ascend’s platform. Once they configure their account initially, there may be more users from the agency added to the Ascend account for quicker access.

• Your agency’s billing contact (the individual whose information was entered in the PathPay account creation popup modal) has not yet completed verification in the Ascend portal. This involves configuring additional account details, such as banking information, information about the agency, etc. all in the Ascend platform.

• If you need to log into the Ascend platform to complete verification, please click here. You will be asked to input the same email that you used when you created the PathPay account. This email address will then receive an email from the Ascend platform with a one-time code, which will allow you to log into the Ascend dashboard to finish account verification. More information can be found here.

• Similar to being appointed with Pathpoint, agencies must have a verified PathPay account prior to being allowed to request to bind. If you are on the subjectivities page, you will see the option to create a payment account as a requirement.

• First, please ensure that the email inbox you’re checking is the same email inbox that you provided as the agency’s primary billing contact during the PathPay account creation step. If the two match, please check your spam folders in your email inbox. The email should be coming from support@useascend.com. If you’re still unable to find the emails or receive them, please reach out to our support team.

• Congratulations on successfully configuring and verifying your PathPay account! Depending on the billing type you chose (between PathPay Insured or PathPay Agency), you may expect different things when you request to bind coverage:

  • PathPay Insured:

    • You will see a final subjectivity prior to requesting to bind where you are prompted to enter the insured’s information. Their full name, email address and phone number are required here. This information is used to send them a checkout link so they may pay, in full, the policy premium at their leisure. Third-party financing is available through this checkout experience and is provided by Ascend.

    • Policy coverage will not be issued with PathPay Insured accounts until the premium has been paid in full by the insured. This ensures a stress-free experience for agents with little to no worry of non-payment or early cancellation.

      • If the insured has lost, deleted or misplaced their email with the premium checkout link, you may procure a new link from the Ascend platform. For more information, click here.

      • For information on what your insured will experience during checkout, please click here.

  • PathPay Agency:

    • Coverage for the policy may be issued prior to receiving payment in full from the agency, but the agency has twenty days to remit payment through the Ascend portal before a NOC (notice of cancellation) will be sent.

    • When subjectivities for the policy are approved, our underwriting team will trigger an invoice email to be sent to the agency’s billing contact. The invoice email will provide instructions on how to submit payment for said policy’s premium.

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