What Fluid Pay does

Fluid Pay is a privately held, partner-only cloud-based payment gateway founded in 2017 and headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee. The platform serves six distinct partner channels — ISOs, agent groups, ISVs, vertical SaaS platforms, acquirers/BIN sponsors, and white-label resellers — and has structurally never boarded a merchant directly, never operated a PayFac, and never shared partner portfolio data. The architecture is a cloud-native REST API and unified dashboard running on Google Cloud with multi-region failover, auto-scaling, and PCI DSS Level 1 certification, exposing 23 named products across card-present (EMV, NFC, contactless via IDTech VP3350, PAX, Dejavoo terminals), card-not-present (Virtual Terminal, E-Invoicing, Tokenizer), recurring billing, batch processing, and hosted pay pages.

Revenue mechanics combine one-time white-label activation fees, flat monthly platform fees, per-MID economics with volume tiers for large partners, pay-per-update pricing for the network-credential Account Updater service, and a low monthly subscription for the WatchDog Community Rules add-on. The company does not markup transactions; partners set merchant rates and retain the residual spread. The product catalog also includes three native pricing programs (Cash Discount via a licensed DTI patent, Surcharging with automatic BIN lookup, and Dual Pricing) and three fraud capabilities (AttackDog ML scoring, WatchDog rules engine, WatchDog Community Rules), with named proprietary technologies such as the Gateway Emulator for migration without code rewrites and the Level 3 Processing engine for B2B/B2G interchange optimization. Fluid Pay processes approximately $48.2M in monthly volume across 12,408 active merchants and reports 99.99% rolling-12-month gateway uptime and 99.2% authorization rate. Leadership includes CEO Theodore L. Cucci (former NMI co-founder), co-founders Jeff Rooney and Nick Cucci (also CFO), EVP Kevin J. Calabrese (Gateway Processing Division, domestic and international), and VP of Risk & Security John Krueger.

Name

Fluid Pay

Legal name

Fluid Pay LLC

Website

https://fluidpay.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2017

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Fluid Pay is a partner-only, cloud-based PCI DSS Level 1 payment gateway serving ISOs, agent groups, ISVs, vertical SaaS platforms, acquirers, and white-label resellers with a single REST API and white-label-ready product catalog across card-present, ecommerce, recurring, and fraud workflows.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Payment Gateway Software

NAICS

Financial Transactions Processing, Reserve, and Clearinghouse Activities (522320)

akta.pro primary industry

Merchant-of-Record (MoR) & Payment Facilitation (PayFac) Infrastructure (FSAGABAE)

akta.pro secondary industry

Payment Gateways & Orchestration (BPAMAFAA)

Keywords

• Payment gateway platform
• ISO partner solutions
• White-label payments
• Embedded payment processing
• Merchant fraud prevention

Headquarters

HQ city

Wheaton

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. White-Label Platform Licensing: Partners pay a one-time activation fee for brand setup, SSL provisioning, subdomain wiring, processor integrations, and initial portal configuration, plus a flat monthly platform fee. No markup on transactions — partners set merchant rates and keep the spread.
2. Transaction Processing Fees (Per-MID): Partners pay per-MID economics that scale with portfolio size. Volume tiers exist for partners boarding hundreds or thousands of merchants. The platform is processor-agnostic; partners can switch acquirers without ripping out the gateway.
3. Automatic Account Updater (Per-Update): Charged only when a card is actually updated by the network batch service — no per-enrollment fee, no per-card lookup fee, no flat monthly charge. This aligns vendor economics with merchant value delivered.
4. WatchDog Community Rules Add-On: Available as a low monthly add-on for ecommerce merchants. Pricing is per merchant or per-MID, with no surprise consumption charges when traffic spikes.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Fluid Pay provides a cloud-native payment gateway platform sold exclusively through channel partners (ISOs, agent groups, ISVs, vertical SaaS platforms, acquirers, and white-label resellers). The platform delivers a single REST API and dashboard powering card-present (EMV/NFC/contactless/magstripe), ecommerce, recurring billing, batch processing, virtual terminal, mobile POS (Processa), tokenization, Level 3 commercial card processing, and proprietary fraud tools (WatchDog, AttackDog). Partners white-label the gateway down to the SSL certificate under their own brand.

Product overview

Fluid Pay is a partner-only payment gateway platform built for ISOs, agent groups, ISVs, and vertical SaaS companies. The platform consists of a unified REST API and dashboard (the core White Label platform) serving 23 named products across four functional areas: (1) Core transaction acceptance — Virtual Terminal, Processa (mobile POS), EMV & Mobile, Tokenizer, E-Invoicing, and Simple Payments; (2) Revenue recovery and retention — Recurring Billing, Automatic Account Updater, Customer Vault, and Batch Processing; (3) Pricing optimization — Surcharging, Cash Discount (DTI patent), and Dual Pricing; (4) Fraud and risk — WatchDog, WatchDog Community Rules, and AttackDog (ML-based). Additional products include Level 3 Processing for B2B/B2G commercial card interchange savings, Gateway Emulator for migration without code rewrites, Shopping Cart Integrations (WooCommerce, Magento, Gravity Forms) plus Fluid Cart, QuickBooks PaySync for accounting automation, and Dashboard Analytics for real-time portfolio reporting. The White Label product is the full rebrandable platform delivering all products under a partner's brand on a single subdomain and SSL certificate. The platform runs on Google Cloud with multi-region failover, achieves PCI DSS Level 1 certification, and has maintained 99.99% uptime over rolling 12 months.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Processa: Partner-branded mobile POS application for card, customer vault, ACH, cash, and terminal acceptance on phones and tablets.
• AttackDog
• WatchDog
• WatchDog Community Rules
• Tokenizer
• Customer Vault
• Fluid Cart

Products and services

• Virtual Terminal Browser-based virtual terminal accepting card and ACH payments on the same form, with vault, hotkeys, surcharging, split payments, custom fields, billing/shipping addresses, per-transaction processor overrides, email receipts, catalog/line items, and vault-on-creation.
• Processa Mobile POS Partner-branded mobile point-of-sale application accepting card (chip, contactless, swipe), customer vault, ACH, cash, and terminal payments on iOS and Android phones and tablets. Mirrors the Control Panel configuration and supports dark mode, biometric sign-in, and IDTech VP3350 pairing.
• AttackDog Machine learning fraud detection using device fingerprinting, IP intelligence, and behavioral scoring to profile and block fraudulent transactions before authorization without adding customer-facing friction.
• WatchDog Gateway-native fraud detection engine combining rules, velocity filters, community blocklists, and ML scoring evaluated on every transaction with sensitivity tuned per MID across Virtual Terminal, recurring billing, ecommerce, Processa, and hosted pages.
• WatchDog Community Rules Crowd-sourced fraud filters curated from patterns (card-spinning, BIN attacks, runaway billing) detected across the Fluid Pay merchant base, packaged as a monthly add-on for ecommerce merchants.
• Automatic Account Updater Network credential refresh service that automatically updates expired, reissued, or replaced card credentials in the vault before the next scheduled charge, covering Visa VAU, Mastercard ABU, Discover, and American Express under one enrollment with pay-only-per-update pricing.
• Batch Processing CSV batch billing feature that processes thousands of transactions in one pass, supporting card, ACH, vault-on-file, recurring billing kickoffs, and refunds with customizable column mapping reused across runs.
• Cash Discount Patented DTI (Debit Technologies, Inc.) cash discount program deployed across card-present, ecommerce, and virtual terminal channels, allowing merchants to offset card processing costs through compliant service charge disclosure.
• Customer Vault PCI-scope-reducing vault storing cards, ACH accounts, addresses, and customer profiles with advanced filtering, search, and multi-location record sharing that powers Virtual Terminal, Recurring Billing, Processa, E-Invoicing, and Tokenizer.
• Dashboard Analytics Real-time portfolio analytics surfacing KPIs, transactions, anomalies, and announcements with per-processor reports, card brand filtering, settlement statistics, customer insights, invoice tracking, and keyboard hotkeys for power users.
• Dual Pricing Compliant dual pricing engine that posts separate cash and card prices transparently across POS, ecommerce, and virtual terminal with no network registration required.
• E-Invoicing Email and SMS invoicing with customizable branded templates, embedded pay links, line-item or flat-amount invoices, multi-currency support, built-in product catalog, and secure hosted payment pages within the gateway.
• EMV and Mobile Acceptance EMV, NFC, and contactless payment acceptance across Processa (mobile), Virtual Terminal (browser), and certified PAX and Dejavoo countertop terminals, with native integration to IDTech VP3350 for chip, contactless, and swipe on phones and tablets.
• Gateway Emulator Legacy gateway migration tool that speaks the request/response dialects of popular older gateways, enabling most merchants to migrate by changing endpoints without rewriting their existing integrations.
• Level 3 Processing B2B and B2G interchange optimization that auto-populates commercial card transaction data (line items, tax, freight, ship-to) for Level 2 and Level 3 qualification across Virtual Terminal, Recurring Billing, E-Invoicing, hosted pages, and API.
• Recurring Billing Subscription and recurring payment engine supporting card and ACH on the same engine with adaptive retries, dunning, custom intervals, prorations, discounts, add-ons, free trials, and account updater integration.
• Simple Payments Drop-in hosted pay-now page configurable inside the gateway with no code or plugin required, deployable as a button, link, or QR code, supporting one-time and recurring, custom fields, surcharging/cash discount/dual pricing compliance, and optional SMS authentication.
• Surcharging Compliant credit-card surcharging platform with automatic real-time BIN lookup, debit-card exclusion, prohibited-state blocking, and partner-configured percentage ceilings (max 3% Visa / 4% Mastercard) across virtual terminal, ecommerce, hosted pages, and supported terminals.
• Tokenizer Pre-built, PCI-compliant card and ACH checkout components with real-time validation, autofill, formatting, masking, Payment Request API, mobile-friendly layout, CSS theming, and SAQ A compliance that keeps PAN off the merchant's server.
• White Label Private Label Gateway Full white-label payment gateway covering branded merchant portal, hosted payment pages, receipts, e-invoicing emails, terminal screens, SSL certificates, and DDoS mitigation on a cloud-native, PCI DSS Level 1, multi-region stack since 2017.

Quantifiable outcome

• Up to 33% of stored card credentials change annually; a well-run account updater recovers 80–90% of changed credentials
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers1 record

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration11 records

AI capability4 records

Feature13 records

Partnerships

Eight partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Debit Technologies, Inc. (DTI)coreTechnology or IntegrationFluid Pay partnered with DTI to bring a patented cash discount program into the gateway. The DTI software determines discount and disclosure based on payment type automatically across all channels (card-present, ecommerce, virtual terminal). This is a key differentiator for small merchants looking to offset card processing costs, as the patent provides compliance protection and the integration removes regulatory interpretation burden from merchants and partners.
• IDTech (VP3350 reader)coreTechnology or IntegrationFluid Pay maintains a native integration with the IDTech VP3350 EMV/contactless/magstripe card reader. The reader pairs with Processa (mobile POS) and the Virtual Terminal via USB-C (primary) or Bluetooth. Card data is encrypted at the read head with DUKPT key management. This integration enables mobile card-present acceptance across phones and tablets.
• PAX TechnologycoreTechnology or IntegrationFluid Pay supports certified PAX EMV terminals alongside Dejavoo. All supported PAX and Dejavoo terminals are EMV chip-card ready and certified, extending the certified EMV footprint beyond countertop hardware to supported mobile and touchscreen terminal models.
• DejavoocoreTechnology or IntegrationDejavoo terminals are supported and certified for EMV chip-card acceptance with Fluid Pay. All supported Dejavoo terminals run native surcharging with tip-aware handling — surcharges and gratuity coexist cleanly on a single card-present sale.
• QuickBooks (Intuit)coreTechnology or IntegrationFluid Pay built a native integration — QuickBooks PaySync — so settled Fluid Pay transactions post directly into the merchant's QuickBooks books with the correct customer, invoice, and GL code. No CSV imports or manual matching required. Covers card, ACH, virtual terminal, recurring billing, and all fee programs (surcharging, cash discount, dual pricing). Authorization takes about 30 seconds from inside the Control Panel.
• Apple PaycoreTechnology or IntegrationApple Pay is natively supported as a contactless payment method through the Fluid Pay / IDTech VP3350 integration and supported terminals. Tap-to-pay on iPhone is enabled for Processa and Virtual Terminal.
• Google Pay (Google Wallet)coreTechnology or IntegrationGoogle Pay / Google Wallet is supported as a contactless payment method through the Fluid Pay mobile and terminal stack. Available wherever NFC contactless is enabled on supported hardware.
• Samsung PaycoreTechnology or IntegrationSamsung Pay is supported as a contactless payment method through the Fluid Pay EMV and mobile contactless stack, available wherever tap-to-pay is enabled on supported devices and terminals.

Scale indicators8 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• NMI (Network Merchants Inc.): A leading ISO/ISV-focused payment gateway and processor. Closest direct competitor to Fluid Pay — both serve the channel-partner model, both white-label the gateway, and Fluid Pay's CEO Theodore Cucci co-founded NMI. Highly comparable on partner economics, gateway orchestration, and embedded payments.
• PayArc: ISO- and agent-friendly payment processor with white-label programs, partner residuals, and gateway services. Comparable on partner economics, ISO channel focus, and the same vertical SMB/merchant profile.
• Stax by Fattmerchant: Subscription-based payment processor serving SMBs through partner and direct channels. Comparable on flat-fee subscription pricing, ISV/ISO friendliness, and a focus on transparent merchant economics — although Stax also runs direct SMB sales.
• PaymentCloud: Merchant services provider focused on high-risk and SMB merchants via the ISO/agent channel. Comparable on the ISO/agent distribution model, although PaymentCloud leans more direct-merchant service than white-label gateway infrastructure.
• USAePay: Payment gateway serving ISOs, agents, and developers with white-label and developer-friendly APIs. Was acquired by Paya in 2021. Comparable on channel-partner distribution, REST API design, and the same ISO/agent buyer persona.

Broad incumbents

• Stripe: Dominant developer-first payments platform. Overlaps with Fluid Pay on API-first gateway orchestration, embedded payments, and white-label checkout (Stripe Connect, Stripe Terminal). Vastly broader footprint; competing increasingly for the same ISV/embedded segment.
• Square (Block): Integrated payments, POS, and software provider. Comparable on integrated POS hardware/software stack and merchant onboarding flow, although Square primarily serves direct SMB merchants rather than the ISO channel.
• Adyen: Global unified commerce platform offering gateway, acquiring, and orchestration in one stack. Comparable on developer-first API design and omnichannel gateway capabilities, though Adyen targets large enterprise rather than ISO/SMB.
• Authorize.Net (Visa): Long-standing payment gateway owned by Visa, widely embedded across ISOs and small merchants. Comparable as a general-purpose payment gateway, but does not compete on white-label depth or partner-only non-compete positioning.
• Braintree (PayPal): PayPal-owned payment gateway and orchestration platform targeting ISVs and large merchants. Comparable on gateway technology and embedded payments, with significantly larger scale and PayPal-distributed merchant demand.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

Compliance4 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles6 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Fluid Pay