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Nicholas Cucci, COO, Jeff Rooney, CTO and Theodore Cucci, CEOFluid Pay has been recognized as the Payment Gateway Company of the Year 2026 by CIOReview and is marking the moment with a major product milestone: certified support for the ID TECH VP3350 EMV device, now available across the platform.
The recognition reflects what Fluid Pay’s ISO, Agent and ISV partners already know: this is a gateway built specifically for the channel. Fluid Pay doesn’t board merchants directly. Instead, it provides the infrastructure, APIs and tools that let partners own their merchant relationships and build differentiated payment experiences on top of a single, unified platform.
A Gateway Built for the Channel
How does Fluid Pay support ISOs, agents, and ISVs through unified payment infrastructure?
“Fluid Pay was designed from the ground up as a channel-first platform. Every feature: from onboarding workflows to API design, exists to make ISOs, Agents and ISVs more effective at serving their merchants,” says Nicholas Cucci, COO, Fluid Pay, LLC.
ISOs and Agents benefit from streamlined merchant onboarding, flexible pricing configuration and the ability to expand into new verticals quickly. ISVs and SaaS platforms leverage Fluid Pay’s developer-friendly APIs to embed payments directly into their software, creating seamless experiences for their end users while unlocking new revenue streams.
The platform handles both card-present and card-not-present transactions through a single integration, eliminating the complexity that typically comes with supporting omnichannel payment environments. Partners don’t need to stitch together multiple vendors or manage disparate systems. Fluid Pay provides one unified platform behind the scenes so partners can focus on growth.
Security and compliance are built into the foundation. As a PCI DSS Level 1 Service Provider, Fluid Pay delivers end-to-end encryption and tokenization across the platform, so partners and their merchants can transact with confidence.
Solving the Industry’s Biggest Pain Points
At the same time, fraud continues to rise, particularly in card-not-present environments, forcing businesses to balance security with customer experience. Overly aggressive fraud filters can decline legitimate transactions, while insufficient controls expose merchants to chargebacks and losses.
Why is consolidating payment systems critical for reducing operational complexity and improving outcomes?
The payments landscape has grown increasingly complex. Many merchants and software platforms still rely on fragmented stacks, using different providers for gateway services, fraud prevention and recurring billing. This creates inefficiencies, data silos and operational friction that ultimately impact revenue.
Fluid Pay was designed from the ground up as a channel-first platform. Every feature: from onboarding workflows to API design, exists to make ISOs, Agents and ISVs more effective at serving their merchants.
At the same time, fraud continues to rise, particularly in card-not-present environments, forcing businesses to balance security with customer experience. Overly aggressive fraud filters can decline legitimate transactions, while insufficient controls expose merchants to chargebacks and losses.
Recurring revenue businesses face their own challenges. Failed payments due to expired or replaced cards lead to involuntary churn, while limited retry logic and outdated billing systems reduce customer lifetime value. Meanwhile, authorization rates fluctuate due to a lack of optimization tools and PCI compliance requirements add another layer of complexity for growing organizations.
“Fluid Pay was built to address these challenges head-on by consolidating critical payment functions into a single, cohesive platform. Instead of managing multiple systems, partners gain a unified infrastructure that simplifies operations, improves visibility and drives better outcomes across the entire payment lifecycle,” says Theodore Cucci, CEO, Fluid Pay, LLC.
Built-In Intelligence: WatchDog Fraud Prevention
A key component of Fluid Pay’s platform is WatchDog, its advanced fraud detection and prevention engine. Designed to operate in real time, WatchDog monitors transactions as they occur, applying customizable rules and intelligent filters to identify suspicious behavior.
Unlike traditional fraud systems that rely on rigid, one-size-fits-all configurations, WatchDog allows partners to tailor controls based on their merchants’ specific risk profiles. This reduces false positives, ensuring legitimate customers aren’t declined, while still protecting against fraudulent activity.
The result is a more balanced approach to fraud management: stronger protection without sacrificing conversion rates. For partners, this means fewer chargebacks, improved merchant satisfaction and better overall performance.
Protecting Revenue with Account Updater
One of the most overlooked drivers of revenue loss in subscription-based businesses is payment failure due to outdated card information. When cards expire or are reissued, transactions can fail, even when the customer intends to continue their service.
Fluid Pay’s Account Updater addresses this problem directly by automatically refreshing stored payment credentials with updated card details from issuing banks. This seamless process helps ensure recurring transactions continue uninterrupted.
“By reducing failed payments and preventing involuntary churn, Account Updater acts as a silent revenue recovery engine; improving retention rates and increasing lifetime value for merchants operating on subscription or recurring billing models,” says Jeff Rooney, CTO.
A Robust and Flexible Recurring Platform
Recurring billing is no longer a niche use case it’s a core revenue model across industries ranging from SaaS to healthcare to membership-based services. Fluid Pay’s recurring platform is built to support this shift with flexibility and scalability.
Partners can implement a wide range of billing models, including subscriptions, installment plans and usage-based pricing. Advanced retry logic and dunning management tools help recover failed payments, while tokenization ensures that sensitive payment data is stored securely.
By combining flexibility with reliability, Fluid Pay enables partners to deliver seamless billing experiences that keep customers engaged and revenue streams consistent.
VP3350 EMV Support: Card-Present, Certified, and Ready to Deploy
In what ways does VP3350 integration expand capabilities for card-present and omnichannel transactions?
Alongside this recognition, Fluid Pay is announcing the completion of integration and EMV certification for the ID TECH VP3350 device. The VP3350 supports EMV chip, magstripe and contactless (NFC) transactions in a compact, reliable form factor, giving partners a certified hardware option that plugs directly into Fluid Pay’s existing ecosystem.
For partners already processing card-not-present transactions through Fluid Pay, the VP3350 extends their capabilities into card-present environments without requiring a second gateway or a separate integration. One API, one platform, both transaction types, that’s the value proposition.
With certification complete, partners can begin deploying the VP3350 to their merchants immediately, backed by Fluid Pay’s end-to-end encryption, tokenization and PCI Level 1 compliance infrastructure.
Recognition That Reflects Momentum
Being named Payment Gateway Company of the Year 2026 is a reflection of the momentum Fluid Pay has built through continuous investment in its platform and its partners. Over the past year, the company has expanded its capabilities, strengthened integrations and delivered tools that help partners scale faster—culminating in the VP3350 certification and a growing roster of channel partners across the payments industry.
More importantly, the recognition highlights Fluid Pay’s commitment to solving real-world problems for the channel; not just adding features, but delivering meaningful improvements in efficiency, security and revenue performance.
Looking Ahead
The VP3350 is the first in a series of planned hardware integrations designed to give partners more options for card-present deployments. Fluid Pay’s roadmap includes further expansion of its API suite, continued enhancements to its fraud and billing tools and deeper support for the evolving needs of ISOs, Agents and ISVs.
As the payments industry continues to evolve, the need for unified, flexible and intelligent infrastructure will only grow. Fluid Pay is positioned at the center of that shift, providing the platform that empowers partners to innovate, compete and scale.
Fluid Pay isn’t just keeping pace with the future of payments; it’s building the platform that lets its partners define it.
Defining Control and Flexibility in Payment Gateway Infrastructure
Payment gateway decisions have shifted from simple transaction routing toward enabling control over how payments are embedded, managed and monetized across ecosystems. Executives in the payment processing sector are no longer evaluating gateways as standalone utilities. The focus has shifted toward platforms that enable intermediaries to retain ownership of merchant relationships while scaling services without fragmentation. This shift reflects a broader expectation that payment infrastructure should support business models, not constrain them, especially when growth depends on speed, adaptability and service consistency.
A recurring friction point lies in the disconnect between card-present and card-not-present environments. Many organizations still rely on separate systems for each, introducing inefficiencies, duplicated integrations and inconsistent reporting. A more effective approach consolidates these transaction types within a single framework, allowing businesses to manage payments through one integration while maintaining consistency across channels. This reduces dependency on multiple vendors and simplifies expansion into new use cases, especially as commerce continues to blur the line between physical and digital transactions. It also gives partners clearer visibility into payment activity across merchant portfolios.
Control over merchant onboarding and pricing configuration has also become a defining factor. Payment providers that impose rigid structures limit how partners differentiate themselves in competitive markets. Platforms that allow flexible onboarding workflows and customizable pricing enable intermediaries to respond to varied merchant needs without rebuilding infrastructure. This flexibility becomes particularly important for organizations targeting multiple verticals, where payment requirements differ and require tailored deployment approaches that align with each segment’s expectations. A gateway that supports this variation helps partners grow without sacrificing consistency.
Developer accessibility has emerged as another critical dimension. Software-led payment strategies require gateways that integrate directly into applications without creating friction for end users. Clean, well-documented APIs support faster deployment and allow software providers to embed payments as a native function rather than an external add-on. This integration model improves user experience and creates revenue opportunities tied to processing while maintaining control within the application layer and reducing reliance on external systems. It also shortens implementation timelines and improves the ability to support changing merchant demands.
Security and compliance remain foundational, yet expectations have evolved beyond baseline adherence. Executives now look for platforms that integrate encryption and tokenization into the transaction lifecycle rather than treating them as separate layers. This approach reduces exposure while maintaining performance, ensuring that compliance does not hinder scalability. Infrastructure aligned with PCI DSS Level 1 standards, while maintaining simplicity in deployment, provides reassurance without adding unnecessary complexity for partners and their merchants.
Fluid Pay aligns with these priorities through a platform designed to support partner-led growth rather than direct merchant acquisition. It provides a unified system that supports both card-present and card-not-present transactions through a single integration, removing the need for multiple gateways and simplifying expansion into omnichannel environments. Its APIs allow software providers to embed payment functionality, enabling consistent user experiences and new revenue streams. Flexible onboarding and pricing controls support adaptation across merchant segments, while built-in encryption, tokenization and PCI Level 1 compliance ensure secure transactions. The certified VP3350 device extends its capabilities into physical payment environments without requiring additional integrations, reinforcing its position as a strong choice for organizations prioritizing control, scalability and integration simplicity....Read more
Payment Gateway Companies Info
Q1
What Should Buyers Expect from Payment Gateway Companies?
Payment Gateway Companies should do more than route transactions. They should give partners a dependable way to manage card-not-present payments, card-present acceptance, reporting, fraud controls and stored credentials without forcing separate systems into the same workflow. A weak gateway decision can leave support teams chasing scattered data after declines, chargebacks or failed renewals. For partners, the stronger model keeps payments infrastructure close to sales, billing, risk review and support work.
Q2
How Does Fluid Pay Serve the Payment Gateway Channel?
Many channel partners want payment technology that will not compete with their merchants. Fluid Pay addresses that problem through a partner-only model built for ISOs, agent groups, ISVs and software platforms. It does not board merchants directly, and it keeps the partner’s brand in front of the merchant. For Payment Gateway Companies, that distinction matters because trust often depends on who owns the relationship after onboarding and who controls the merchant experience afterward.
Q3
Which Capabilities Matter in a Modern Gateway?
Buyers need to be careful about how the gateway handles subscription billing, tokenization, fraud prevention, account updates, batching, and even in-person payments. The payment gateway vendors get more value out of being able to do all this stuff in one console and API instead of in different systems. Test these features with a live scenario such as a card expiring, retries and the need for clear reporting without needing to recreate the ticket off multiple pages. A portfolio-level fraud engine should also allow the team to add stricter controls around the high-risk merchants, without overly restricting good merchants.
Q4
Why Do Card-Present and Online Payments Need to Work Together?
Merchants often sell in more than one setting, even when the back office wants one record of the customer and one payment history. Payment Gateway Companies that connect online and in-person acceptance can reduce duplicate integrations, fragmented reporting and extra vendor handoffs. The issue usually appears when teams try to reconcile counter sales, e-commerce orders and stored customer data after the fact. One payment record makes follow-up faster and reduces avoidable support loops.
Q5
How Does Fluid Pay Connect Hardware, APIs and Reporting?
Partners already using Fluid Pay for online payments can add certified ID TECH VP3350 support for EMV chip, magstripe and contactless transactions through the same API used for card-not-present processing. One vault and shared reporting reduce the need for a second gateway. Among Payment Gateway Companies, that matters because partners can expand into card-present use cases without rebuilding the payment stack from scratch. That can be useful when partners need one support record across both payment environments.
Q6
How Should Partners Compare Payment Gateway Companies?
Partners should evaluate Payment Gateway companies by testing security strength, uptime, level of integration, branding, visibility into disputes and support hand-off. Compliance isn't optional, and Fluid Pay has been a PCI DSS Level 1 Service Provider since 2019, using encryption and tokenization throughout. The functional test is as easy as whether a partner can add a merchant, track a transaction, and handle a payment problem without giving up ownership of the client relationship.
Company
Fluid Pay
Management
Nicholas Cucci, COO, Jeff Rooney, CTO and Theodore Cucci, CEO
Description
Fluid Pay provides a unified payment gateway platform for ISOs, Agents and ISVs, helping them manage merchant relationships through integrated payment infrastructure, fraud prevention, recurring billing and card-present and card-not-present transaction support, backed by strong security, compliance and partner-focused tools.
