10x processing growth in 3 years: How Zeely and Solidgate built a payment stack designed to scale
+8%Approval rate lift
10xProcessing growth in 3 years
40% Risk metrics reduction
Industry
AI-powered SaaS (marketing & sales tools) Region
US, UK, Canada, Australia, IndiaUse case
B2C/B2B subscription payments, multi-acquirer orchestration, risk optimization Features used
Orchestration, acquiring, network tokenization, anti-fraud, chargeback management, subscription billingAt a glance
is an AI-powered marketing platform that helps small businesses and e-commerce sellers create high-converting ads, build sales pages, and launch campaigns – all from their phone.
Featured by Forbes, Google, and TechCrunch, the platform gives entrepreneurs access to tools that used to require a full marketing team: AI video creators, ad creative builders, automated campaign management across Meta and Instagram, and built-in payment processing.
Zeely partnered with Solidgate in 2022, when the company had ambitious scaling plans and needed a payments partner that could grow with them – not one they'd outgrow in a year.
The goal from the start was to build a payment infrastructure that would keep pace as the business expanded into new markets, added customers, and multiplied its processing volume.
Three years later, Zeely's processing has grown 10x, with 3x year-over-year growth in 2025. That trajectory is the result of a payments strategy built together from the ground up – one improvement at a time, compounding quarter after quarter.
What Zeely needed from a payments partner
A payment stack that would scale with them, not against them
Zeely's team knew from the beginning that payments would either accelerate growth or bottleneck it. They needed a partner who would proactively optimize approval rates, advise on acquirer strategy, help open new payment methods, and keep costs competitive as volume grew.
The alternative was cobbling together multiple vendors or relying on a single large payment service provider (PSP) with one-size-fits-all pricing. This meant accepting limited control over routing, less visibility into performance, and higher costs that would eat into margins as Zeely scaled.
For an AI-first company moving fast across multiple markets, that wasn't an option.
Higher approval rates to capture every customer who wanted to pay
When the partnership began, Zeely's approval rates had room to grow, as every declined first payment meant a lost customer.
Closing the approval rate gap required a deliberate strategy: better acquirer relationships, smarter routing, and the kind of payment infrastructure that issuers trust – all of which takes time and sustained effort to build.
Proactive risk management before it became a constraint
Scaling fast in online SaaS payments comes with a predictable risk: chargebacks, disputes, and fraud ratios creep up as volume grows.
Zeely needed a partner who would stay ahead of risk metrics – not wait for card network monitoring programs to flag problems. The goal was to keep risk low enough that it never became a ceiling on growth.
The right payment methods for the US market
Zeely's customer base is heavily concentrated in the United States, where payment preferences go beyond cards. PayPal remains one of the most widely used online payment methods among the small business owners and entrepreneurs who make up Zeely's core audience.
Opening PayPal – as part of an orchestrated payment stack, not a standalone bolt-on – was a strategic priority from early in the partnership.
Building the payment stack, year by year
The work that turned Zeely's payments into a competitive advantage wasn't a single deployment. It took three years of iterative improvements that matched their needs – each one building on the last, contributing a few percentage points that compounded into the 10x growth the business sees today.
Phased migration from tier-2 to tier-1 acquirers
Solidgate and Zeely started with tier-2 US acquirers and, over the course of the partnership, systematically built a portfolio of tier-1 banks.
The migration was phased deliberately – each new acquirer was onboarded, tested, and tuned before volume shifted, ensuring zero disruption to live payment flows while Zeely's transaction volumes continued to climb.
Today, Zeely processes through JPMorgan Chase, Adyen US, and Checkout US, with Worldpay US in progress, among others. That's the same caliber of used by the largest digital businesses in the world, giving Zeely higher issuer trust, better approval rates, and the routing flexibility to distribute volume where it performs best.
Smart routing and cascading across multiple acquirers
With multiple tier-1 acquirers in place, Solidgate deployed and payment cascading across Zeely's payment flows. Each transaction is dynamically routed to the acquirer most likely to approve it based on card type, issuer, geography, and historical performance data.
When a transaction is declined by one acquirer, cascading logic automatically retries it through an alternative processor before the customer sees a failure. Combined with strategies optimized for Zeely's specific markets and time zones, this setup recovers transactions that would have been permanently lost in a single-acquirer environment.
Network tokenization: Protecting revenue through transitions
Solidgate implemented powered by Visa Token Service (VTS) and Mastercard Digital Enablement Service (MDES) across Zeely's payment flows. The impact showed up in two ways.
First, performance improved. After network tokenization went live, conversion rates increased by 7-14 basis points, translating to meaningful additional monthly revenue for Zeely from transactions that would have otherwise declined.
Second, tokenization proved its value during the acquirer migration. When one of Zeely's tier-2 banks closed, all tokens were preserved on the Solidgate side. The entire recurring payment tail transferred to the new acquirers with near-zero loss, and cascading logic kept first payments flowing without interruption.
For Zeely's subscribers, nothing changed. For the business, it meant a potentially disruptive event passed without impact.
PayPal US: A new customer segment unlocked
Solidgate enabled PayPal as a payment method within Zeely's orchestrated checkout, fully integrated alongside card payments, Apple Pay, and Google Pay via a single API.
The setup wasn't a standalone PayPal integration but part of the unified routing and reconciliation layer, meaning Zeely's team manages it in the same dashboard and with the same reporting as every other payment method.
PayPal opened a new customer segment in the US market and lifted checkout conversion, making Zeely Solidgate's largest PayPal US merchant.
Bringing risk metrics down, not just managing them
Solidgate deployed its full risk management toolkit across Zeely's payment flows: , , , and smart cancellation logic that pauses subscriptions on critical before they escalate to chargebacks.
The approach was proactive from day one. Solidgate's team flagged fraud patterns before they became problems, recommended changes to checkout flows, and worked with Zeely to build layers of intelligence around each transaction – without adding friction to the customer experience.
The result: combined risk metrics dropped by 40%.
10x growth – and a partnership built to keep compounding
Three years of iterative work have produced a payment operation that looks fundamentally different from where it started. Every quarter brought another improvement that made the whole stack a little stronger.
● +8pp approval rate lift, driven by the migration to tier-1 acquirers, smart routing across multiple processors, and network tokenization that increased issuer trust.
● 10x processing growth over 3 years (and 3x year-over-year in 2025), supported by a that was built to scale alongside the business.
● Meaningful additional monthly revenue from network tokenization alone, through improved conversion rates and preserved recurring payments during acquirer transitions.
● Risk metrics reduced by 40% in 3 months, achieved through anti-fraud screening, chargeback prevention, automated representment, and smart subscription cancellation logic.
● Zeely became Solidgate's largest PayPal US merchant, opening a new customer segment and lifting checkout conversion in Zeely's largest market.
● Tier-1 acquirer portfolio including JPMorgan Chase, Adyen US, and Checkout US (with Worldpay US in progress), giving Zeely the same payment infrastructure used by the world's largest digital businesses.
Zeely plans to double its processing volume by the end of 2026, and the payment infrastructure is already in place to support it.
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