The first payments company to put both halves of the transaction - accepting money and paying suppliers - on a single rail.
CONNEXPAY // Plano, Texas. A payments platform built for the merchants banks once called "high-risk" - travel agencies, marketplaces and insurers.
In the payments industry, companies almost always pick a side. You either help a business collect money from its customers, or you help it pay its suppliers. ConnexPay looked at that split and decided the two sides never should have been separate.
Founded in Minneapolis in 2017 and now headquartered in Plano, Texas, ConnexPay describes itself as the first and only company to bring together the two sides of the payment process - payment acceptance and virtual payment issuing - into a single platform, with one contract and one reconciliation. In plain terms: the card revenue flowing in from your customers is used to instantly fund the payments flowing out to your suppliers.
That sounds like plumbing, and it is. But the plumbing solves an expensive problem. Traditionally, a travel agency selling a flight has to collect the traveler's card payment through one provider, wait for it to settle, then use a separate pre-funded account to pay the airline or hotel. The gap between those two events ties up cash, adds risk, and forces two sets of reconciliation.
ConnexPay closes the gap. By aligning incoming customer payments with outgoing supplier payments in real time, it removes the need for pre-funded accounts, reduces the risk that a supplier is paid before the customer's funds clear, and captures card rebates along the way. The company says it now issues more than $10 billion in payments a year.
The idea came from inside the industry. Founder Bob Kaufman spent 18 years at U.S. Bank, including a stint as CFO of its Payments Services division and general manager of its Virtual Pay unit. He had seen exactly why acceptance and issuing stayed separate - and why they didn't have to.
ConnexPay sits in the middle of the flow. Instead of two disconnected systems, the money moves through one.
A traveler or buyer pays by card, wallet or ACH. ConnexPay accepts the payment.
Incoming funds instantly back a virtual card - no pre-funded account required.
Intelligent PayOuts issues the optimal virtual card to the airline, hotel or supplier.
When Kaufman founded ConnexPay, the industry treated travel agencies and online marketplaces as high-risk. They were forced into fragmented systems that bottlenecked cash flow: collect first, wait to settle, pre-fund a separate account, then pay suppliers, then reconcile twice. That gap cost money and carried risk.
The COVID-19 travel collapse became an unintended proof point - agencies with instant access to their own cash weathered the shock better than those waiting on settlement.
Most providers do acceptance or issuing. ConnexPay does both on one rail, under one contract, with one reconciliation. That structure removes pre-funded accounts, reduces supplier risk, and lowers the cost of accepting cards.
Its patented Intelligent PayOuts engine goes a step further, choosing the specific card brand and settings for each supplier to maximize acceptance and rebates - a level of optimization single-sided providers can't easily match.
"When I founded ConnexPay in 2017, the payments industry treated travel agencies and online marketplaces as high-risk businesses, forcing them to navigate fragmented systems that bottlenecked their cash flow."Bob Kaufman, Founder & Chairman
Accept customer payments and issue supplier payments from one platform - one contract, one reconciliation.
A decisioning engine that picks the optimal virtual card brand and settings per supplier to maximize acceptance and rebates.
Single-use and configurable virtual commercial cards across Visa, Mastercard and UATP.
Infrastructure and SDKs so software platforms can embed acceptance and issuing, including white-label.
Real-time disbursements pushed to a payee's eligible Visa or Mastercard debit or prepaid card.
Managed-services solution for B2B payment delivery, payee network management and supplier disbursements.
Who uses ConnexPay. Travel agencies and brokers, online travel firms and marketplaces, e-commerce providers, insurance and claims companies, advertising platforms, ticketing businesses, and software companies embedding payments. Travel was the beachhead; insurance, advertising and embedded payments are growing verticals.
The company reports it more than doubled its client base after the 2022 Series C, and cites a roughly 95% client retention rate.
How it makes money. ConnexPay is B2B payments infrastructure. It earns on payment processing and virtual card issuance - through processing and interchange economics and card rebates shared with clients - by sitting in the flow between a merchant's incoming and outgoing payments.
It sells directly to merchants and through embedded and white-label partnerships with software platforms, where its model creates referral opportunities "without competitive overlap."
ConnexPay has raised more than $145M across four disclosed rounds, culminating in a 2022 Series C led by FTV Capital with Panoramic Ventures, F-Prime Capital and BIP Ventures.
Bar lengths are proportional to disclosed round size. Series A/B amounts per company history; seed round undisclosed.
Bob Kaufman, former GM of U.S. Bank's Virtual Pay division, launches ConnexPay to unify acceptance and issuing.
Raises $15M and earns a PhocusWire Hot Startup nod as COVID validates instant cash access for travel clients.
Raises $20M and launches its Intelligent PayOuts decisioning engine.
FTV Capital leads a $110M growth round to fund global expansion, pushing total funding above $145M.
Partners with Payouts Network on real-time payouts; wins Inc. 5000, Juniper and Phocuswright recognition.
Patents Intelligent PayOuts, launches Integrated Credit and UATP issuing, and appoints Ben Peters CEO.
Introduces a managed-services platform for B2B payment delivery and supplier disbursements.
Founder Bob Kaufman led ConnexPay as CEO for seven years before becoming Chairman of the Board in April 2024. He is a CPA and CMA with a master's in finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Ben Peters, who ran operations at insurance-payments firm VPay (acquired by Optum in 2021), took the CEO seat to scale the company.
"ConnexPay is the first and only company to bring together the two sides of the payment process - payments acceptance and virtual payments issuing - into a single platform with one contract and one reconciliation."
— ConnexPay"ConnexPay's commitment and passion to solving customers' real business problems."
— Ben Peters, CEO"Digital payments adoption defines the B2B winners and losers."
— ConnexPay, PYMNTS interviewNamed to America's fastest-growing private companies in 2023 and again in 2024.
Best Instant Payment Innovation, Future Digital Awards 2023.
Recognized at Phocuswright in 2023.
Awarded a patent for its Intelligent PayOuts decisioning engine in 2024.
The B2B payments landscape is crowded, but usually specialized. Acceptance is dominated by names like Adyen and Stripe; virtual-card issuing and travel disbursement by players such as WEX, Conferma Pay, Nium and AirPlus; issuing infrastructure by Marqeta. Traditional bank commercial-card programs sit alongside all of them.
ConnexPay's position is defined by the seam it occupies - between acceptance and issuing. Rather than competing head-on in either category, it argues the two belong together, and builds for verticals where the gap between money-in and money-out is most painful. That focus on "high-risk" travel, insurance and marketplace merchants is both its niche and its moat.
More than $10 billion moves through ConnexPay each year - and most people outside the payments industry have never heard of it. That's the nature of infrastructure: essential, and invisible by design.
Explore ConnexPay's platform and leadership interviews: