Infinicept, the first and only open, agnostic payment facilitator platform, announced today that it has helped Fivestars, the largest rewards and marketing platform for local businesses, launch as a payment facilitator. By integrating multi-tender payment services into its core loyalty and marketing automation product, Fivestars is projecting to generate $1 billion in annualized gross payment volume in its first year of operation and $6 billion in gross payment volume in three years with the support of operational efficiencies from Infinicept’s platform.

“We looked far and wide, deeply evaluating providers we could find, and Infinicept was the clear choice,” explained Matt Doka, Co-founder and CTO of Fivestars. “Infinicept’s industry depth and agnostic role have proven to be exactly what we needed. We were able to get to market incredibly fast, allowing our team to focus on building an innovative payment service for local businesses that turns cash and credit card transactions into loyalty program signups.”

During beta testing earlier this year with more than 100 businesses, Fivestars saw extraordinary results that exceed those of Fortune 500 companies like Starbucks who have integrated payments with their customer loyalty program. Early results show that:

• For local businesses using Fivestars Pay, 70 percent of customer spend can be influenced by the Fivestars customer loyalty program (versus 41 percent of Starbucks spend is influenced by Starbucks Rewards in the U.S.)¹;
• New payments and loyalty integration tripled loyalty program signups;
• Fivestars members using Fivestars Pay are returning at three times the rate of non-members;
• Fivestars members using Fivestars Pay are spending $34 per transaction versus $25 for non-members.

“We are thrilled to see customers like Fivestars recognize the tremendous benefit of offering payments as a value-added service,” said Todd Ablowitz, CEO and Co-Founder of Infinicept. “The Infinicept software as a service (SaaS) platform is purpose-built to reduce the complexities of integrating merchant acceptance, underwriting, and back-office operations into a high-performance solution that is flexible, modular and also is bank, sponsor, processor, gateway and CRM agnostic.”

Fintech and SaaS companies are increasingly adopting the payment facilitator model as they recognize the significant revenue, valuation, and customer experience benefits of embedding payments in their solutions. This opportunity has fintech disruptors like Infinicept driving the payment facilitator market towards explosive growth with total transaction volume on track to maintain nearly 80% CAGR through 2021.

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