Clearbill is a hackathon prototype, not a real product. All data is mock (fictional), all money is PayPal sandbox test money, and it is not HIPAA compliant. No real app is published anywhere. Testing has been very limited.
Inspiration
We were looking for a real problem worth solving with PayPal and AI, and we started by reading KFF's research on health care debt (KFF Health Care Debt Survey). It found that about 41% of US adults (around 100 million people) carry debt from medical or dental bills. Reading that, we took the problem from the paper and asked a simple question: what if the bill was easy to understand, and the patient and the clinic could agree a monthly plan that works for both, with PayPal collecting every payment? That became Clearbill.
Our Story: Ethan Cole is hit by a car on a Saturday bike ride and spends days in hospital. He then receives a $43,110 bill that his insurer denied. He did nothing wrong, and he cannot pay it in one go.
Clearbill reviews the bill and finds errors, including duplicate charges and a wrongly denied emergency claim. After those corrections, the bill is reduced and agreed at $4,500. Ethan pays it as $250 a month for 18 months.
What it does
Clearbill has a phone-first patient app and a clinic website, and PayPal connects the two.
Patient app
Get your bill from your clinic: bills come straight from the clinic into the patient's app.
Understand your bill: each bill line is explained in plain words. Rules and an AI second opinion flag likely mistakes, such as a duplicate charge, an extra hospital night, an out-of-network charge or a wrongly denied emergency claim.
Agree a plan: the patient sets a monthly budget. The patient's agent and the clinic's agent then agree a plan inside the clinic's own rules. After corrections, Ethan's $43,110 bill is agreed at $4,500, paid as $250 a month for 18 months.
Pay with PayPal: the plan becomes a monthly PayPal subscription. The patient can also receive the bill as a PayPal invoice with a QR code.
Clinic website
The main point for clinics is a hassle-free process with no chasing patients for payments.
Patient management: clinics register their patients.
Approve plans: the clinic approves payment plans.
Manage EMIs: monthly installments are tracked and collected automatically through PayPal.
Staff roles: staff sign in with roles.
Billing desk: shows plans, invoices and money received in one place.
How we built it
- PayPal: OAuth, Subscriptions, Invoicing v2 (with QR code) and Reporting in the PayPal sandbox.
- AI: Google Gemini (gemini-3.5-flash-lite) writes the plain-language bill review, the two agents' wording, the bill-photo scan and the "ask your data" box. Rules decide all money; the AI only explains.
- AG Grid and AG Studio: AG Grid draws every table, AG Studio draws every chart.
- Render hosts the app. Built with Next.js, React, TypeScript, and a Capacitor Android wrapper for testing.
- The demo video uses Seedance 2.0 and ChatGPT images.
Challenges we ran into
- Making sure the AI never decides money: mistake detection and plan numbers are rules, the AI only explains and writes.
- PayPal sandbox accounts must be US region, or USD invoices fail.
- Building a believable dashboard with no real data, so we added clearly labelled sample history.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- A full flow that works end to end: bill, mistake check, agreed plan, real PayPal sandbox subscription, and the clinic seeing it live.
- A clinic site with roles, masked data, an audit log and a three-page AG Studio dashboard.
- Keeping the AI honest: the numbers always come from rules.
What we learned
- How to use PayPal Subscriptions, Invoicing and Reporting together in one flow.
- That AI is most useful for explaining, and rules should decide anything involving money.
- How to build and theme AG Studio charts and keep them readable.
What's next for Clearbill
A real launch would need HIPAA agreements with every clinic and vendor, encryption at rest and a real database, real text-message sign-in, each clinic connecting its own approved PayPal merchant account (Clearbill would never hold funds), and review of billing-error detection by billing professionals.
Try it: https://clearbill-sm7c.onrender.com · Code: https://github.com/Swethavenna-github/clearbill · Video: https://youtu.be/E48VVr5sKc0
