Payment Depot
“Can a membership-pricing model for wholesale interchange rates sustainably win high-volume SMB payment processing share against traditional percentage-markup processors?”
Payment Depot was founded in 2013 as a differentiated merchant payment processor using a membership-based pricing model — charging merchants a flat monthly fee plus a small per-transaction fee with no percentage markup, giving access to wholesale interchange rates. This 'Costco of credit card processing' positioning resonated with higher-volume SMBs. The company was subsequently acquired by Stax Payments, a larger payment technology platform serving ISOs, software companies, and SMBs, and now operates as 'Payment Depot by Stax'. Backend processing is powered by Fiserv (formerly First Data), indicating a standard ISO-style infrastructure arrangement rather than direct card network connections.