Challenge

Transformity cofounder and CEO Param Bidja comes from a family of liquor store owners. He witnessed firsthand the challenges owners in this industry faced, including manual processes and thin margins. In 2023, Bidja cofounded New York City-based Transformity, which provides US beer, wine, and liquor retailers with SaaS software that helps refine every aspect of their operations—including POS, inventory management, employee management, and more. The goal: to increase their profits.

Transformity wanted to build a white-labeled platform offering retailers a unified commerce experience that integrated all sales channels and backend systems. This required a versatile payment processor with flexible payout options—key for merchants managing high transaction volumes.

“Payouts are very important to these merchants because they’re doing high volumes, and they’re relying on that funding to cover payroll and pay their vendors,” said Bidja.

The company needed to support both in-person and online sales, as many retailers generate approximately $2 million annually through small transactions of just $20–$40. This necessitated fast checkout solutions, reliable hardware, integration with third-party delivery services such as DoorDash and Instacart, and robust fraud protection to safeguard the industry’s characteristically thin margins.

Finally, Transformity needed to enable new user experiences, such as loyalty programs, across all of these sales channels. This requirement was particularly important for in-person interactions, meaning Transformity’s POS and readers needed to be able to sign up new customers, validate a customer’s loyalty account, and apply relevant discounts.

Solution

Transformity enabled the majority of Stripe’s product suite to manage online and in-person payments in one place and with a single integration set. The Transformity team built its product on Connect to embed white-labeled payments into their offering, manage and pay out retailers, and give retailers access to more of Stripe’s financial solutions—including Stripe Terminal and Stripe Invoicing.

The team implemented Terminal and the Stripe Reader S700 for efficient in-person transactions, running their loyalty program directly on the devices. “When customers get to the register, they can punch in their phone number and even sign up for the loyalty program,” said Bidja. “We were one of the early adopters for forms on the reader display.”

Transformity used Stripe Payments to offer users access to more than 100 global payment methods optimized for both in-person and online transactions. The company added Link, a digital wallet built by Stripe, for secure payment autofill and also relied on Stripe’s well-documented APIs for rapid integration. “Those aspects made it a lot easier to integrate a strong test environment,” said Bidja.

Transformity adopted Invoicing so retailers could easily and professionally invoice corporate clients, with Payment Links as a no-code way to receive payments on those invoices. And the team implemented Stripe Radar to help detect and block fraud with AI while letting legitimate payments go through.

Transformity turned to Stripe Billing to bill and manage subscriptions for retailers using its software. The Billing API enabled Transformity to easily integrate the tool into its platform, allowing the company to automate every part of recurring relationships—including retrying failed payments at the ideal time.

Transformity partnered with Stripe professional services for help with its rollout, ultimately implementing “pre-dipping” (where customers can proactively insert their card before an order has finished being rung up) to expedite checkout. The professional services team also hosted workshops focused on fraud and dispute best practices, Stripe Dashboard navigation, and solutions for Transformity’s specific reporting needs.

Results

One week for full integration with Stripe, compared to two weeks or more for other processors

Stripe’s APIs and developer-friendly documentation meant Transformity’s engineers easily integrated Stripe’s solutions into their offering, and launched their online and in-person payments offering faster than they had added other processors. “We finished our initial Stripe integration in three or four days,” said Bidja. “And we were taking payments within a week.”

Connect helped Transformity improve retention with flexible payouts

Connect’s ability to deliver flexible payout options helped Transformity drive retention by meeting the varying cash flow needs of retailers—whether that’s the next morning or full trading day. “We have at least four different options for payouts right now,” said Bidja. “We use the embedded components that Stripe offers for payouts, so we don’t have to actually build these things ourselves. We just quickly add them and show the information to our merchants in a white-labeled way.”

Stripe Terminal now helps owners process thousands of transactions a day

Transformity deployed Stripe Reader S700 with a feature called Apps on Devices to run its custom POS app directly on the reader for an all-in-one handheld experience. This allows Transformity to run the store’s loyalty program directly on the reader, so store customers can enter their phone numbers to access rewards and pay for their goods on the same device. These efficiencies are significant, given the many transactions liquor stores process.

“Our merchants are doing thousands of payments a day,” said Bidja.

Transformity doubled payment volume in 60 days through Stripe

Partnering with Stripe has been a driver of growth for Transformity. “Just in the last couple months, we’ve doubled our payment processing volume,” said Bidja. “And we continue to see really strong growth even after that.”

Stripe’s suite of tools prepares Transformity to grow

Stripe offers a fully integrated set of tools that go beyond Transformity’s current needs, which allows Bidja and his team to strategize about what new products they want to bring online next. “We’re building a suite of tools to offer the best products to our store owners and help them grow their businesses—without leaving our platform,” said Bidja. “We want to have the infrastructure available to us to build whatever that may look like in the future.”