We're more than happy to announce our partnership with Lynk, a branded payments platform that helps gig economy companies reduce processing fees and increase customer loyalty.

With today's inflation and rising interest rates, banks are passing their higher cost of funds onto merchants, which weighs the risk of passing those additional costs onto their customers, otherwise reducing their profits. Gig economy companies such as ride-hailing, delivery, and takeaway firms may not survive the current cost of living crisis that the rise of inflation is causing.

However, with Lynk, gig economy companies can focus on creating customer reward programs that not only help build loyalty, but also reduce their cost of doing business.

Plug and Play's General Partner Alireza Masrour was introduced to Lynk by Sean Merat, the founder of Owl, another company in the Plug and Play portfolio. Lynk spent a few months building rapport and proving its concepts while Alireza conducted due diligence on both Lynk's product and founders.

“We reached a point in our growth journey that was causing us to lose lots of repeat business. By implementing Lynk’s closed-loop branded payment system we were able to create digital payment wallets with customer reward programs that delighted our customers. The best part was we could use the card fee savings to fund the rewards program so it had no impact on our bottom line," said Fez Rismani, CEO and founder of Daily Delivery.

Lynk has allowed Daily Delivery to fund its own customer loyalty rewards, similar to the platform Starbucks spent millions to build from the ground up, with significant annual savings in processing fees. The loyalty rewards program helped increase their repeat business by more than 50% and they're just getting started.

Creating a finance platform and building customer loyalty are two of the biggest challenges for businesses, especially startups. All the technology needed to build new fintech solutions exists today, but it’s a relatively untapped market when it comes to packaging and offering as a product.

Lynk CEO and founder Nabi Awada brings nearly 20 years of experience developing and managing consumer and enterprise software. Before starting Lynk, Nabi was the Global Chief Product Officer at Rappi / RappiPay, one of the largest unicorns in Latin America. He helped Rappi raise over $3.35bn to build challenger banks and credit programs throughout Latin America.

The team behind Lynk

The rest of the team brings extensive experience in their respective fields as well as growing startups. Lynk provides a low-cost solution that requires little upfront investment or cost and the fees saved can be used to build customer loyalty. Unlike others in the space, Lynk takes days versus months to set up. The company doesn’t charge setup fees, minimums or require long-term contracts, making the platform accessible to startups and gig economy companies.

Nabi Awada and Lynk co-founder and VP of operations Ali Sedighi bring the background and experience to succeed. Plug and Play is delighted to partner with such a convenient payments platform.