Introducing Launchpay

By Todd Ablowitz, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Infinicept

For vertical software companies, dealing with payments has always been hard.
It was more than ten years ago that we began asking: Why?
Now, we introduce Launchpay.

When Deana and I started Infinicept more than a decade ago, we were consultants and saw first-hand just how difficult it was. Software companies were creating cool new products for every industry you can imagine from restaurants and event management to education, utilities, and even government agencies. But in order to get paid by their customers, they needed to work through a patchwork of payments vendors. This, of course, caused many issues. For starters, there wasn’t a central point of contact, they gave up a big piece of their own pie, and they had no control over the experience they provided.

Then the Payfac model came into play. This was promising. It tore down the walls so one company could now do it all. But as it turned out, the model has been pretty difficult to build and manage.

Deana and I had an idea back then that still guides us today. Infinicept would handle the messy stuff. We’d make it easier for companies to do what they set out to do. We made it Infinicept’s mission to enable the transformation to software-led payments everywhere.

After hundreds of engagements that have included everything from consulting services to our PayOps software, we know what works. We’ve been able to help companies gain vast operational improvements, achieve fast time-to-market, and retain the autonomy they need to really thrive. The results can be seen in our growth. In fact, our client’s gross payment volume just surpassed an annualized $15 billion!

Even with the progress, we knew that we’ve only been solving part of the equation with our embedded payments software platform. Too many players in the market have hyped up the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that so many software companies now have around becoming a PayFac. The truth is no matter how much we made it easier with our PayOps platform and our advisory services, it wasn’t enough. As a fast growing software company, we just couldn’t swim upstream against the market. So many software companies simply are not ready to take on the full responsibility of payments. Time and time again, customers ask us, “Can you just do the payments for us?”

The other vendors take too much and leave them with limits on what they can achieve. Unfortunately, instead of making it better, most vendors often make it harder and more expensive. How could we tackle the entire $825 billion embedded finance market without providing what so many are asking for, especially when no one offers them the flexibility and control they deserve?

We never set out to be a payments company. But at the repeated request of customers, we sought ways to address their challenges. For example, we helped establish the Embedded Payments Bill of Rights to lay out basic principles that should underpin the industry and serve as a roadmap for all that leverage embedded payments. It’s important that we create a united front to establish a future where accountability, transparency, customer experience, and innovation are the rule and not the exception.

We have also partnered with other great companies in the ecosystem to bring our customers the simplified and improved payments facilitator capabilities they need. There are some great offerings out there, and we have helped hundreds around the world, yet there are too many gaps. Whether it be risk tolerance, endless launch timelines, or missing products or features, no one has it all. So in the end, we decided the best way to help was to create Launchpay. In order to deliver on our mission and to foster an era of payments innovation, we had to provide a broader spectrum of products, services, and support.

Our new Payfac-as-a-Service. Launchpay, follows the same vision we’ve had from the beginning. It says, we’ll help you, your way. We’ll meet you wherever you are. When you are ready to own some of the payments process, we empower you to do so. When you want the whole thing, it is yours to control.

With Launchpay, our new Payfac-as-a-Service, we meet customers wherever they are on their payments journey – from start to finish. And like PayOps, Launchpay puts customers in the driver’s seat. It helps software companies plot their own future. And it gives them the freedom to own as much of the payment experience as they want, so that they can innovate and scale on their own terms.

We are committed to being a partner for software platforms that allows them to thrive, shape their own destinies, and most importantly control their customer experience.

For more on Launchpay, read our press release here.