Challenge

After founding a gym in 2011, software engineer Dan Uyemura spent months negotiating payment terms with his processor and looking for gym management software that would reduce the administrative hassles he faced on a daily basis at his own gym. “All the existing software was woefully inadequate,” said Uyemura. “So I said, ‘Let’s build this.’”

The result was PushPress, which offers a suite of tools that simplifies gym management processes, improves the member experience, and provides access to key analytics. Uyemura and his cofounders knew that integrating payments into their new software platform was key to its success: gym owners needed the ability to validate memberships at the door and take payment, if necessary. Uyemura recalled discovering that dozens of people were getting a free ride at his gym because they had purchased a 10-class pass that was never actually checked.

“The unification of payments to operations is critical,” he said.

The PushPress team considered building the payments infrastructure from scratch and pursuing the independent sales organization (ISO) route, which would involve becoming their own merchant services company. But that was going to involve months of engineering work, not to mention a heavy compliance burden, both of which the startup would struggle to handle. So, they hoped to find an off-the-shelf solution that would minimize the lift from their team and help them get to market faster. With interest in their platform from gym owners in international markets, PushPress’s founders knew they also needed the ability to operate in foreign currencies to support their long-term strategy. And because gym owners’ business models included different subscriptions and client segments, PushPress would have to offer multiple options for accepting payments and verifying gym users’ financial status.

PushPress also needed tools to manage its subscription billing tiers, including a free tier for newer gyms and paid tiers for mature operations. And with so many clients and transactions across the platform, PushPress knew it would need powerful reporting and analytics tools to easily import core transactional data into its financial management systems.

Solution

Uyemura and his team decided to launch their platform with Stripe Connect after looking for APIs from other processors and considering developing their own payment integration without a partner. Connect allows platforms to embed payments into their products, so gyms could seamlessly process payments using PushPress’s platform. “We signed up, and we built it right into the product,” said Uyemura. “We were pretty much on top of it from day zero.”

Stripe’s end-to-end payment experience, from pay-in to payout, meant that PushPress could put payments at the center of its platform and thus its gyms’ operations. As a result, when an individual checks in, PushPress can validate their membership status and ensure the visit is paid for without becoming a friction point for the gym owners. This ensures owners and coaches aren’t spending needless time cross-referencing class attendees with a payment system before each class—or allowing attendees to slip in for free.

Among the other features that made Connect appealing was its seamless onboarding for new users, which was significant to PushPress’s goal of making the lives of gym owners easier. With out-of-the-box identity verification and automatic compliance updates, Stripe-hosted onboarding helps minimize user errors and allows gym owners to sign up securely and efficiently in just minutes.

PushPress implemented Stripe Payments to manage payments in local currencies, so it could scale internationally with the click of a button—wherever Stripe already operated. That implementation gave gyms the option to accept their choice of credit cards, as well as SEPA Direct Debit in the EU and BECS Direct Debit in Australia. Looking ahead, PushPress plans to use the Payment Element, an embeddable UI component, to provide access to more than 100 payment methods in currencies from around the world.

“The Payment Element provides us as developers much easier ways to turn different payment methods on and off,” said Brian Aung, a cofounder of PushPress and its head of fintech.

PushPress also used Financial Connections to let gym owners authenticate their members’ banking information, enabling gyms to easily implement ACH as a payment method for recurring memberships.

To address its own billing challenges, PushPress implemented Stripe Billing, a no-code billing software that makes it easy for PushPress to manage the different subscription tiers it offers.

The company also implemented Stripe Radar, which uses AI trained on data across millions of companies worldwide to detect and block fraud. PushPress took advantage of Stripe Data Pipeline as well, which sends PushPress’s up-to-date Stripe data and reports to its data warehouse, so the company can use both its own custom queries and Stripe’s built-in reports to gain business insights.

Results

Partnering with Stripe enabled PushPress to launch in weeks rather than months

Connect’s ability to support a fully compliant embedded payments solution out of the box and the ease of integrating Stripe technology into the company’s gym management platform accelerated PushPress’s go-to-market time. Instead of the months it would usually take to establish an ISO, the company completed its Connect integration in weeks.

PushPress now serves 5,000+ gyms and processes over $650 million in payment volume

Partnering with Stripe from day one has been a major contributor to PushPress’s growth since it launched over a decade ago. Today, the company serves more than 5,000 gyms and processes over $650 million in payment volume annually, with over 50% YoY growth—in large part because the platform’s ability to embed Stripe’s fully integrated product suite into the heart of its user experience created a seamless financial experience for gym owners.

Gym owners are now up and running in three to five minutes with Stripe-hosted onboarding

Onboarding a new banking relationship can be painful for gym owners, involving weeks’ worth of negotiations with a payment processor. Stripe Connect makes it happen nearly instantaneously. “The Connect onboarding experience for our users was, ‘fill out your form and you’re in your account,’” said Uyemura. “That’s the lifeblood of everything.”

Stripe’s APIs eliminated the need for a payments engineer for over a decade

The ease and convenience of the Stripe integration meant that PushPress did not have to hire a payments engineer for more than a decade. PushPress has expanded significantly over the years, adding a CRM, a branded app, a workout tracking app, and insurance coverage tailored for gyms—all while still relying on the original Stripe APIs—even as Stripe continues to add more functionality that supports the platform and its users.

PushPress expanded to 34 countries

Right from its launch, PushPress was able to bring international gyms on board with little to no additional work because of Payments’ ability to serve customers in 195 countries across 135+ currencies.

Today, PushPress operates in 34 countries and counting, with support for over 800 international gyms.

“We were always able to go to market and say we work in every country Stripe works with,” said Uyemura. “And it doesn’t require a ton of lift from us.”

Financial Connections gave gym owners the flexibility they needed

Financial Connections allows users to securely share their financial information, and its ability to authenticate gym members’ banking details gave PushPress gyms additional flexibility in the payment methods they offered. For some, the faster payouts of credit card processing were worth the fees, while others chose to save on fees by accepting ACH payments—even if they had to wait a little longer for their funds. “To a small business owner, having that optionality with payments is very important,” said Uyemura.