RedFynn Simplifies Multi-Tiered Residuals and Cuts Development Costs by 80% with Merchant Central

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RedFynn is a fintech company built on payments, technology and SaaS. Founded in 2018 by Shane Hurley, a payments industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience, RedFynn works with a large network of experienced independent agents and sub-independent sales organizations (sub-ISOs) to deliver payment solutions to merchants across food and beverage, retail, services and other verticals. Relationships are central to its approach, both with the partners that sell its solutions and the merchants they serve.

The Challenge

RedFynn’s network of agents and sub-ISOs help it reach and serve merchants across a wide range of verticals. But the model also brings operational complexity. Agent-led deals often involve several layers of partners, creating a multi-tiered hierarchy of stakeholders each with their own share of the residual revenue.

“We regularly have two or three levels of partners sharing residuals on a single merchant account,” said Hurley. “You might have a sub-ISO, a sales manager and an agent, all with their own split. As the portfolio grows, keeping those payments accurate gets complicated very quickly.”

RedFynn needed a way to manage its growing merchant portfolio while accurately tracking the structure and residual split behind each account. At the time, Hurley couldn’t find a platform that could support the model, so the company built its own CRM, investing years of development work and more than $1 million in the platform. But the investment didn’t stop once the system was built. Maintaining it, adding functionality and keeping pace with the needs of the business continued to consume development time and money.

“We spent years and more than $1 million building our own payments CRM, and it worked,” said Hurley. “But the amount of time, money and development resource it took was significant. Eventually I had to ask myself, ‘Do we really want to be in the CRM software business?’ And the answer was no. Our business is payments.”

How NMI Helped

That changed when RedFynn began evaluating NMI Merchant Central. The first test was the capability that mattered most: managing multi-tiered residuals.

Hurley already knew how difficult that functionality was to build, and after seeing other platforms fall short of RedFynn’s requirements, he wanted to know whether Merchant Central could genuinely handle the complexity of its partner structure.

One Platform to Manage the End-to-End Merchant Lifecycle

Today, Merchant Central is the backbone of RedFynn’s operations. The company uses almost every module in the platform to streamline and manage the full merchant lifecycle, from bringing in new leads and signing agreements to supporting existing accounts and giving merchants access to reporting.

That consolidation matters to RedFynn. Rather than stitching together separate systems for different parts of its operations, the company can manage more of the merchant lifecycle through one platform.

Giving Agents the Tools to Sell and Support Merchants

Merchant Central also gives RedFynn a platform it can extend to its network of sub-ISOs and agents, making it easier for them to recruit, onboard and manage merchants on RedFynn’s behalf. That network includes partners with very different levels of technology experience.

“We have all types of agents working with us. Some are incredibly tech-forward and others would still do everything on paper if they could,” said Hurley. “The important thing is that we can get all of them using Merchant Central and give them the tools they need to be more effective.”

RedFynn uses Merchant Central’s white-label capabilities to create branded experiences for its sub-ISOs. It also takes advantage of the platform’s modular structure to introduce functionality gradually rather than asking partners to learn everything at once.

An agent might start with the tools they need to sign a deal or access documentation, before being introduced to reporting and other capabilities as they become relevant.

“You can have the best technology in the world, but it only creates value if people actually use it,” said Hurley. “We introduce Merchant Central in stages, starting with the things an agent needs immediately and then adding more as they go. That makes a platform with a lot of capability much easier to adopt.”

For RedFynn’s sub-ISOs, the ability to offer Merchant Central under their own brand is another important benefit.

“The white labeling is a huge value-add for our sub-ISOs,” said Hurley. “We can give them a powerful platform that feels like part of their own business and brand, while still giving them access to all the tools behind it.”

The Results

Moving its core CRM operations to Merchant Central has had a significant impact on RedFynn’s development costs.

The company still develops specialist technology where it sees an opportunity to differentiate and add value, including solutions for verticals such as pawn and jewelry and hospitality. But it no longer needs to devote the same resources to building and maintaining the operational CRM functionality that supports the wider business. As a result, RedFynn has reduced its monthly development costs by around 80%.

“Moving our backend operations to Merchant Central cut our monthly development costs by about 80%,” said Hurley. “We’d spent more than $1 million building our own CRM and it still didn’t come close to what Merchant Central gives us today.”

The impact goes beyond the direct cost saving. RedFynn can now focus more of its development resources on products and experiences that differentiate its business and create value for its partners and merchants.

“The biggest benefit is that we can put our energy where it belongs,” said Hurley. “Instead of spending time rebuilding CRM functionality, we can focus on delivering great payments experiences to our partners and merchants. That’s what our business is here to do.”

For Hurley, there is one more important part of the relationship: partnership. RedFynn prides itself on being more than a technology or processing provider to the agents and ISOs it works with. Hurley sees that same approach reflected in its relationship with NMI.