Paylive

Paylive is an independent software company operating in the financial payment sector, founded and wholly owned by Richard Fink. Based in San Francisco, California, the company is structured without debt, external partners, or employees other than its founder. Fink, who serves as the visionary and creator of the PayLive Payment System, also handled the system design and coding. His extensive background includes system design, large-scale computing, and software development, with management experience in the airline, coffee, and legal industries. Notably, he co-authored an early Disk Operating System for the IBM 1401, developed an international airline reservations system for East African Airways in Kenya, and computerized Kenya's coffee industry.

The company's core offering is a digital payment system that functions as an alternative to physical credit cards for in-person purchases. The system is smartphone-agnostic, meaning it is compatible with any modern smartphone, including iPhones and Android devices, without relying on proprietary hardware like NFC chips. This universal compatibility is a key differentiator from competitors like Apple Pay and Google Pay. The technology works by having the user's smartphone display a QR code to the merchant's existing card reader, which would require a software extension to support the system. A central feature of Paylive's design is its security model, which inverts the conventional practice of storing customer financial data on merchant servers. Instead, heavily encrypted credit card information is stored exclusively on the user's device, mitigating the risk of large-scale data breaches from centralized servers.

Paylive's business model targets several revenue streams and strategic positions. The company sees itself as a potential fallback technology for major payment systems like Google Pay and Apple Pay, capturing transactions when a user's phone is not compatible with the primary NFC-based system. Revenue generation is anticipated from bank interchange fees and the monetization of comprehensive data analytics on consumer buying habits. Other potential exit strategies include being acquired by a company seeking to enter the retail payment market, such as PayPal or Stripe, or by a firm focused on big data analytics, like Facebook or Amazon. The product is reportedly complete, tested, and ready for market integration.

Keywords: digital payment system, smartphone payments, financial technology, payment processing, mobile payments, Richard Fink, cardless transactions, secure payments, payment gateway, data encryption, QR code payments, point of sale technology, fallback payment technology, data analytics, interchange fees, payment security, smartphone agnostic, credit card alternative, in-person payments, retail payment solutions