Reintroducing Finix: A PayFac for Platform Payments

For the last year and a half, the Finix team has been heads down, evolving our product to allow software platforms (e.g., vertical SaaS companies, fintech providers, e-commerce tools, and marketplaces) of all sizes to manage their payment operations while increasing revenue and reducing costs. Today I’m excited to share what we’ve built and why software platforms—from startups to publicly-traded companies—use Finix to power their payments.

Manage your payment operations with Finix 

For years, software platforms have used Finix’s white-label API to manage payment operations like transaction processing, payouts, and merchant onboarding. More recently, we’ve added the following capabilities:

1. Finix is now a registered payment facilitator (payfac). This registration allows us to support software platforms that:

   • Want to go live in days rather than months

   • Are processing any amount in total payments volume (TPV)—from $0 to over $1B

   • Want to become payfacs themselves someday

2. Accept in-person payments

   • We’re actively deploying new mobile and cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) devices for in-person transactions.

   • We will make this functionality more widely available later in 2022.

3. Manage payment operations

   • Managed merchant underwriting that allows platforms to run white-labeled KYC, AML, and MATCH™ checks using our API-driven underwriting engine.

   • Sub-merchant management capabilities that help platforms’ sub-merchants remain compliant with Payment Card Industry (PCI), tax reporting, and sanctions screening obligations. 

   • Enhanced reporting capabilities that give platforms granular transparency and visibility into what’s happening on their platform. 

   • Industry-leading ACH payout speeds allow sub-merchants on your platform to be paid out two business days after a transaction is processed (T+2).

   • Advanced pricing configurations (including interchange-plus pricing) allow platforms to exercise greater control over processing fees for their sub-merchants. 

4. Increase revenue and reduce costs

   • Real-time fraud monitoring helps prevent disputes, which can be costly and time-consuming to resolve.

   • Account updater technology updates a consumer’s card information when changed, letting businesses capture more revenue by completing transactions that would otherwise be declined. Currently in beta.

   • Alternative payment methods like Google Pay and Apple Pay help increase conversion rates, especially on mobile devices—driving more revenue. 

   • Level 2 and Level 3 processing allows certain businesses to qualify for lower fees when processing Visa and Mastercard branded corporate, business, or purchase cards if additional information is passed along during a transaction.

Evolve your payments strategy with Finix

Founders sometimes ask me when they should start using Finix. They (incorrectly) assume they must be processing over $50M/year before it makes sense to start working with us. That is not true. Finix works with software platforms of all sizes (i.e., from $0 to $1B+ in total payments volume) that want to integrate payments quickly and evolve their strategy over time.

For years, established software platforms like Wave, Kabbage from American Express, and Lightspeed have trusted Finix to provide some of their most business-critical payments infrastructure while they operate as payfacs (or with a similar direct sponsorship from a bank). But over the past year and a half, we’ve begun working with more early-stage startups (e.g., Beyond) and established companies looking for an easy way to offer embedded payments to their customers for the first time (e.g., Cargas). 

Many smaller platforms, as well as companies that are new to payments, understand the benefits of becoming a payfac eventually—better economics, custom funds flows, direct relationships with their customers/merchants, etc.—but aren’t able to invest the necessary time and money yet. They’re attracted to Finix because we give them the ability to execute a “crawl, walk, run” strategy:

1. Software platforms get started with Finix quickly (i.e., days, not months)

2. As they scale, platforms take advantage of Finix’s advanced payment operations capabilities

3. Later, they can choose to become payfacs themselves—while continuing to use the same Finix API and dashboard with minimal switching costs.

The new processing and payment operations capabilities described above allow Finix to serve software platforms of all sizes. If you’d like to learn how Finix can help your platform manage payment operations while increasing revenue and decreasing costs, get in touch.

Our growth and availability 

Finix has grown considerably over the past few years thanks to our incredible customers. Billions of dollars in total payments volume (TPV) flow through our system each year. After an astonishing boom in digital payments from 2019 to 2020, we're proud that Finix has more than doubled TPV from 2020 to 2021. Through our customers, we also have the privilege of supporting over 12,000 active small businesses (e.g., gyms, field service providers, restaurants, etc.), schools, and places of worship each month. If you compared Finix to Nilson’s 2021 list of top US merchant acquirers, we would rank in the top 50 based on TPV and merchant count. Finally, Finix’s API gives our customers the peace of mind that we’ll grow with them as they scale, handling all of their activity—billions of requests per year—with 99.999% uptime. 

Up next

Over the next few months, we’ll share more about our new brand (e.g., new logo, color system, domain, and website design), product updates, and some exciting new customer stories. Stay tuned by signing up for our newsletter using the form in the footer of our site.