Zift offers software companies a one-stop shop by hosting the company’s platform and integrating a payment solution.
For ten years, Marc Roberts and Nate Hughes successfully ran Platinum Payment Systems. In so doing, they recognized a need in the payments industry for a better, streamlined payment process specifically for software companies that want to offer payment services from within their platform. “Technology has been a major disruption in our industry,” Roberts says. “Rather than get left behind, we decided we wanted to get ahead of this curve.”
So Roberts and Hughes left Platinum Payment Systems in the able hands of their partners and started Zift. Zift offers software companies a one-stop shop by hosting the company’s platform and integrating a payment solution. So the software company’s clients can manage their software and payment needs from one location, which is a far better solution than dealing with multiple third-parties in order to process payments. “We’re allowing platforms to become their own payment processing engine,” Hughes says.
“We want to facilitate the next generation of payments and change how people interact with platforms,” Roberts says, and explains that the next generation of payment processing means frictionless signup, integrated payments, and the elimination of third party connections.
In order to ensure that every payment is processed securely, Zift is Level 1 PCI Compliant. That means that every year they have a major audit to try and find vulnerabilities in their system. It also means they have all the policies and procedures in place to handle credit cards. And there are a lot of policy and procedures. But the hassle is worth it to Roberts and Hughes who see a big business opportunity in being able to offer a secure, integrated payment system.
By offering payments as a service, Zift hopes to change not just the payment processing industry, but the technology industry as well. As Roberts says, “We’re really a technology payments company.”
