Note from the Publisher:  When we launched FintekNews.com, we had to do a fair bit of search before we found the right domain name with a .com available, although .net would have been fine, too.  Today, we decided to just do a search of "fintech" on the web and see what came up.  The first site was - www.fintech.net.  Lucky dudes - how did they get that great domain?! 

The next thing that caught our eye was the tagline that showed up on the search - "Alcohol Electronic Payment System".  Hmmmm - alcohol and fintech.  We thought that bore looking a little further and here's what we found - a company that was ahead of its time as a sector-specific payments processor offering EFT payments as an option to its customers, 20+ years ago.  The objective - as it still is with fintechs - was to streamline (DISRUPT) an antiquated system, address regulation and make some money.  Looks like they succeeded.


From their website......

".....Working with over 2,800 distributors, our business processes alcohol invoices for more than 425,000 relationships nationwide and over $23 billion in payments annually.  Since receiving our first state approval in 1991 to use electronic funds transfer (EFT) as a cash equivalent for the payment of beer, wine, and spirits, the Fintech system has reinvented the alcohol data and payment process for customers across the country.

However, in the beginning, it had to overcome the fact that an electronic payment option was not as widely accepted in the '90s as it is today....

Fintech, nonetheless, very clearly saw the problems we could address for the alcohol industry. With electronic payments and data reporting Fintech could increase security, ensure compliance with all alcohol regulations, and most importantly – make alcohol payments universally more convenient.  The challenge was persuading not only customers to transition to electronic payments, but also each state to declare EFT a cash equivalent. With Fintech’s home state of Florida being the first to pioneer this approval in 1990, our founders journeyed to each state to prove that EFT was consistent with the principles behind each states’ alcohol regulations.

It took years of perseverance, but Fintech’s electronic data and payment program is now approved by all 50 states as a cash equivalent for alcohol payments – an achievement that solidifies Fintech as an instrumental asset to the modernization of the alcohol world."