“Can a vertical payments company for professional services (legal, accounting) become the full financial and operational OS for those firms by layering practice management, embedded lending, corporate cards, and AI on top of its payment rails?”
Founded in 2005 as a payments company for legal professionals under the AffiniPay brand, the company's first product LawPay became the nationwide standard for IOLTA-compliant attorney payments. Beginning in 2022, it aggressively expanded beyond payments into practice management software through a series of acquisitions (MyCase, DocketWise, CasePeer), pivoting from a pure-play PSP into an end-to-end vertical SaaS platform for legal and accounting firms. In August 2025 the company rebranded from AffiniPay to 8am, signaling the transition from a payments utility to a full professional-services operating system, layering in embedded lending (8am Capital), spend management (Smart Spend), and AI tools (8am IQ) on top of its core payment rails.