Proceed Finance vs CareCredit for Dental Practices 2027

Proceed Finance vs CareCredit: the short answer for dental offices

Proceed Finance vs CareCredit is a choice between two different products, not two versions of one card: Proceed is a loan sized for large treatment plans, and CareCredit is a reusable card where the promotional period largely sets what the practice pays. TL;DR: if one case is several thousand dollars and the patient needs a fixed schedule for years, price Proceed first; if the office wants one patient account for many mid-size procedures, price CareCredit first. Neither vendor's own pages show a practice fee figure we could verify, so the final call should rest on written quotes, not headline rates.

If neither option fits your case mix, our CareCredit alternatives guide covers other financing paths.

Key Takeaways

• Proceed Finance is a fixed-payment loan for one treatment plan at a time, and its sample terms run much longer than CareCredit's promotional periods.

• CareCredit is a reusable card. The practice chooses which promotional options to offer, and longer promotions cost the practice more.

• The practice-side fee is the biggest unknown. Proceed's provider page gives no fee figure, and CareCredit's fee depends on the promotion selected, not on the patient's credit score.

• Patient risk sits mainly in deferred interest, which both the CFPB and AARP describe as costly when a balance is not cleared in time.

• Before you choose, get written quotes for the practice fee, payout timing and loan minimums from each lender.

What each product is, in plain terms

Proceed Finance is a healthcare lender that funds one treatment plan, and the patient repays a set monthly amount over a set term. New loans are made by Optum Bank or Security First Bank and serviced by Security First Bank, according to Proceed Finance.

CareCredit is a reusable healthcare credit card: patients use one account for several purchases, and qualifying purchases can carry promotional financing. CareCredit is part of Synchrony Financial (NYSE: SYF), a Fortune 200 company with 90+ years of financial experience, according to CareCredit. The same page says practices are typically paid within two business days of processing.

The distinction matters for the office. A loan prices one case, and the lender's fee and payout terms attach to that case. A card prices the account, and the practice's fee moves with the promotion the office selects. Both models can carry a practice-side cost, and neither vendor's own page gives a number for it.

How we evaluated these two options

We weighted six criteria by how much each one changes what the office pays and which patients it can finance. The weights are our judgment for a buyer's guide, not a measured score. A practice with mostly small-ticket work may move fee visibility and payout higher.

Fee visibility and patient interest structure carry the most weight because they change the cost of every approved case. Approval reach carries less weight here because neither vendor page we checked publishes a minimum credit score. Both route approval through the lender, so the office should ask each lender for its decline rate in writing rather than assume one.

Side-by-side on the decision points

The clearest difference is structure. Proceed's sample plans stretch one case across 72 or 144 months, which fits a large plan but makes total interest a real cost. CareCredit gives the office control over which promotions it offers, and that choice drives the fee, so it is not one fixed rate. In our reading, a practice without a financing coordinator will find a single loan per plan easier to run consistently. CareCredit covers more small purchases on one account, but it asks the office to manage a menu of promotions.

What each option costs the practice

Pricing checked November 10, 2026. Proceed does not publish a practice fee on the provider page we opened, so its fee is quote-based. CareCredit's practice-side range comes from a third-party guide, not from CareCredit: CareCredit practice fee: 4–14% of financed amount according to Herring Bank (reviewed 2025). The same guide says the longer the promotion, the higher the merchant discount, so a 0% promotion for 24 months costs the practice more than one for 6 months.

Read this table as a list of questions for each lender, not as a price comparison. The Proceed example is a patient price, not a practice fee. The CareCredit range is a secondhand figure from a bank's guide, so neither replaces a written quote for your promotion mix. Ask each lender for its fee at the exact promotion lengths and term you plan to offer, and ask for payout timing in writing.

Proceed Finance: where it fits and where it does not

Proceed suits practices with large elective cases where the patient needs a long, fixed schedule. Proceed's providers page lists loans from $1,500 to $75,000, state minimums of $3,000 in Colorado and Georgia and $6,000 in Massachusetts, and sample plans of $5,000 at $91 a month over 72 months at 8.99% APR and $25,000 at $314 a month over 144 months, according to Proceed Finance (undated page). The same page says no down payment is required.

The limits are concrete. Because loans start at $1,500, a case below that floor falls outside the product. Long terms also mean the patient pays well above the case price, which the worked example below quantifies. The pages we checked publish no minimum credit score and no practice fee figure, so both belong on the quote request.

Implementation starts on the provider side. The providers page offers a provider sign-up option and a consultation request, and it does not list enrollment steps. Plan for staff training on the loan terms before the patient's appointment, and confirm which bank will appear on the patient's loan paperwork.

CareCredit: where it fits and where it does not

CareCredit suits offices that want one patient account for many mid-size purchases and are willing to manage a promotion menu. The provider FAQ states that dental practices can choose which promotional financing options to offer. Its promotions run 6, 12, 18 or 24 months on qualifying purchases of $200 or more, and its reduced-APR terms run 24, 36 and 48 months on purchases of $1,000 or more and 60 months on purchases of $2,500 or more, according to CareCredit. CareCredit reduced APR: 17.90% to 20.90% according to the same FAQ, which lists the standard purchase APR as 32.99% in a footnote dated May 30, 2024.

The main limit is deferred interest. The FAQ's own wording is that interest "will be charged from the purchase date if the promotional balance is not paid in full" before the promotion ends. That makes the promotion length a patient-side risk as well as a practice-side cost. The FAQ also says the practice pays no annual or monthly fees, and that the processing fee varies with the promotion selected, not with the patient's credit score.

Implementation is simpler on the practice side. There is no recurring provider charge to budget, and funds arrive within two business days according to CareCredit's provider page. The operational work is in choosing which promotions to offer, tracking which patients are still in a promotion, and making sure staff know the payoff date for each one.

Patient-side risk: deferred interest and APR

Deferred interest is the feature that most often surprises patients. Deferred interest paid by patients: $1 billion according to CFPB (2023). The CFPB's figure covers more than 17 million medical purchases from 2018 to 2020, and the agency describes deferred interest as costly for patients who do not clear the balance in time.

Typical medical credit card APR: 26.99% according to AARP (2023). The same article says that if a balance remains after the promotion, the patient is charged all the interest that would have accrued since the original purchase date, and that deferred-interest financing can be advantageous for patients who pay in full during the promotion.

For the office, the risk shows up as surprised patients and unpaid balances at promotion end. A payoff reminder scheduled before each promotion expires reduces that risk. A workflow can schedule the reminder, but the office still decides whether to send it and what to say.

Worked example: a $5,000 case and a $25,000 case

Take an illustrative office, not a real customer, that quotes one $5,000 implant case and one $25,000 full-arch case. On Herring Bank's example, a $5,000 implant case on a 24-month 0% CareCredit promotion pays the practice about $4,300 to $4,500, so the discount is $500 to $700, or 10% to 14% of the case, according to Herring Bank (reviewed 2025). On Proceed's sample plans, the same $5,000 at $91 a month for 72 months totals $6,552, which is $1,552 above the case price, and the $25,000 sample at $314 a month for 144 months totals $45,216, or $20,216 above the price. So CareCredit's cost shows up on the office's side of the ledger, while Proceed's sample plans show the cost on the patient's side. The follow-up section below describes a proposed workflow that starts when a plan like these moves to financing pending, using an ASSOCIATION_ADDED event from HubSpot's webhook docs as the example trigger.

Keeping treatment-plan follow-up from slipping

A proposed, configurable workflow from US Tech Automations would start when a treatment plan above a practice-set dollar threshold moves to "financing pending" in the practice's scheduling or CRM system. If the practice uses HubSpot, an ASSOCIATION_ADDED event, which records that a link between two CRM records was created, could signal that change. The workflow would create a front-desk task, log which lender the patient chose, and place the case in a review queue. Staff would review each approval or decline before the patient hears the terms, because the lender's offer sets the APR and term, not the workflow.

The prerequisites are concrete. The practice's system must expose treatment plans and status changes through an API or a scheduled export. We did not find a public API for either lender in the pages checked, so approval status would come from the lender's portal or a manual upload. The human review points stay with the office: choosing which promotion to offer on each case, approving each proposed workflow action, and confirming the payoff reminder before any promotion ends. This is a design to confirm with the office's own system owner. No live deployment or measured result is implied.

Zapier, Make, n8n, or an in-house build

A stitched-together setup in Zapier, Make or n8n is a real alternative, and it can cover more than many offices expect. Run histories, retries and error branches are configurable in those tools once they are set up. The office still owns the design of duplicate protection (so one status change does not create two tasks), escalation when a step fails, access controls for patient financial data, and maintenance when a field name changes. A proposed US Tech Automations design could configure those pieces in one place, but it would need the same API access, a named staff owner and written review points, so it does not remove the work.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: skip a workflow if the office requests one lender's quote a month and has no tracking gap, because the lender's portal or a phone call to its provider line is simpler. Skip it if a financing coordinator already tracks every open promotion by hand and the case volume is small. And skip it if the practice takes only cash and card at checkout, because there is no approval flow to automate.

Who this is for

• Proceed Finance suits offices with large elective cases where the patient needs a long, fixed schedule and the practice can absorb a quote-based fee.

• CareCredit suits offices that want one patient account for many mid-size purchases and can manage a promotion menu.

• Both can make sense for a mixed case load, but only after each lender's practice fee is in writing for the promotion lengths the office plans to use.

Red flags: a lender that will not state its practice fee in writing; a plan that runs promotions without a payoff reminder before each one expires; and no named owner for the list of patients with open balances.

Glossary terms used in this guide

• Deferred interest: interest that accrues from the purchase date and is charged if the promotional balance is not paid in full by the end of the promotion.

• Merchant or processing fee: the percentage the practice pays on each financed sale, sometimes called a provider fee.

• Promotional period: the window in which the offer carries no interest or reduced interest.

• Amortized loan: a loan with a fixed payment that pays the balance to zero by the end of the term.

• Financed amount: the sale total the lender funds for the patient.

• Payout timing: how soon the practice receives funds after a sale is processed.

• Reusable card: an account a patient can use for multiple purchases, each with its own promotion choice.

• Quote-based: a price the vendor does not publish, so only a written quote sets it.

Decision checklist before you request quotes

1. Ask each lender for its practice fee at the exact promotion lengths or term you plan to offer.

2. Confirm payout timing and funding dates in writing.

3. Check any state minimum before you quote a smaller case.

4. Decide which promotion lengths the office will offer, and price each one.

5. Set a payoff reminder before each promotion ends.

6. Confirm which bank issues the loan paperwork for each patient.

7. Confirm whether your practice system can export treatment-plan and financing status.

Frequently asked questions

Is Proceed Finance cheaper than CareCredit for a dental practice?

No single answer is supported by the pages checked. Proceed publishes no practice fee figure, and the only CareCredit practice-fee range we found comes from a bank's guide, so the cheaper option depends on the case size, term and promotion you actually plan to use.

Does CareCredit charge dental practices an annual or monthly fee?

No. CareCredit's provider FAQ says it does not charge providers annual or monthly fees.

Who owns CareCredit?

CareCredit is part of Synchrony Financial (NYSE: SYF), according to its provider page.

Who makes Proceed Finance loans?

New loans are made by Optum Bank or Security First Bank, and Security First Bank services them, according to Proceed's lenders page.

Do either of these publish a minimum credit score?

Not on the pages checked for this guide. Both route approval through the lender, so ask each one for its decline rate in writing.

Should a practice offer both?

Often a practice offers one primary option and a second for larger or harder cases. Do that only after both lenders' practice fees are in writing for the promotion lengths the office plans to use.

Bottom line

Start with a written practice-side quote from each lender for the exact promotion length and term you expect to offer, then choose by case size: Proceed for large, long-term plans and CareCredit for many mid-size purchases on one account. Put payoff reminders and financing-status tracking in place before you start, whichever you pick. To see how US Tech Automations configures this, review the proposed design with your own system owner first.