Pharmacy payment facilitator HealNow filled a $5.5 million seed round, CEO Halston Prox tells Erin exclusively.

Why it matters: With the exception of the largest pharmacy chains, payment tech for pharmacies has remained largely offline, but HealNow hopes to modernize the process for regional and independent shops.

Details: Bonfire Ventures led the round in the New York City-based startup.

• Walkabout Ventures, Remarkable Ventures, Alabama Futures Fund, and Impulsum Ventures joined.
• Funds will go to hiring more staff across implementation and product, as well as adding features like two-way texting and accounts receivable.
• Prox expects the company to get a Series A refill in the next 12-18 months.

How it works: The company charges pharmacies a monthly subscription fee to use its prescription management and checkout systems, which serve both pharmacies and patients, plus a flat-rate service fee for prescriptions purchased on the platform.

Flashback: After working with a large health system as part of his work with electronic health record giant Epic, Prox saw dozens of physicians order prescriptions for patients and "essentially send them down a rabbit hole."

• So he created HealNow as an effort to bridge the gap between pharmacies and patients.

What they're saying: Prox sees HealNow's functionality as similar to that of Toast, the Boston-based restaurant ordering and payments startup.

• "What Toast did for restaurants, we're doing for pharmacies," says Prox.