Husband, Dad, NED, Tech Due Diligence, building @sonalaihq, https://teapaw.org/t.co/l68DVN0T2P and opensource projects for the agentic ai era at https://teapaw.org/t.co/QWBMUGGuX5
Manchester, England
Joined March 2010
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About two years ago I started asking a question that I couldn't put down. Why does it cost a business money every time a customer pays them, and why does that cost grow with the size of the sale?
I've spent more than 20 years building solutions acros many sectors including payment and banking systems, so I knew the answer and it isn't greed.
A card payment passes through a lot of hands.
1. The customer's bank that issued the card. The card scheme.
2. The merchant's acquirer.
3. A processor or gateway.
4. Often an agent or reseller who sold the merchant the account,
5. and a terminal provider on top.
Every one of them does real work, carries real risk, and needs to be paid. Nobody in that chain is making a fortune on a single transaction. It's just a long chain.
So the question changed from "why are they charging so much" to "does the payment need to travel that far?"
I just published The New Target for Marketers Isn’t You — It’s Your AI Agent timchosen.medium.com/the-new…
“Everyone uses Stripe. Why would anyone use BriizPay?”
Someone said this to me at a networking event recently. I explained the savings, the payment experience and the businesses already using it. He still didn’t think it would work.
It made me think about the story behind this photo.
If you recognise my profile picture, it’s cropped from this image. It was taken barely two weeks after my daughter was born, when I became a father for the first time.
About a month before she was conceived, I’d been made redundant.
My wife and I had recently married and were planning our honeymoon. Suddenly, we were deciding whether to cancel and save the money or go ahead with the trip we’d been looking forward to.
We decided to go. We didn’t want uncertainty to put every part of our lives on hold.
A few weeks after we returned, we found out she was pregnant.
I took factory shifts while looking for another role. I fitted interviews into breaks and after work. There were rejections. There were offers that wouldn’t reliably cover our living costs. There were plenty of moments when I questioned what would happen next.
About two months later, I received an offer at roughly double my previous salary. Seven months after that, this picture was taken.
I couldn’t have known how things would turn out during those factory shifts.
Now, following another redundancy, I’m in an uncertain period again. This time, I’ve chosen to focus on building BriizPay, with contract work helping me cover my family’s living costs.
The conversation at that networking event reminded me that one person’s “no” can feel much bigger when you’re already carrying uncertainty.
But I also have experience to draw on. In my previous Head of Technology role, introducing Pay by Bank alongside cards helped a mainly B2B business save over £300,000 in card fees.
And within BriizPay’s first few weeks, we’ve had barbers, taxi businesses, ecommerce stores and cleaning services using it. There is still plenty to prove, but there are people finding value in what we’ve built.
Fatherhood has taught me something about patience. You show up every day, pay attention and learn as you go. You can’t rush every stage just because you’re anxious about what comes next.
I feel some of that same responsibility towards BriizPay. It’s something I’ve brought into the world, and now the work is helping it grow. That means listening to customers, accepting useful criticism and changing what isn’t working.
I’m building BriizPay to help businesses spend less money taking payments and less time dealing with them.
And if time is money, perhaps we’re helping them save twice.
If you’re a founder, business owner or the person who chooses how your business takes payments, I’d love to hear from you.
What would make you consider adding Pay by Bank: lower fees, faster access to your money, or something else?
Happy to compare costs using your own numbers and show you how BriizPay could fit into your business.
Drop me a message or leave a comment.
#BriizPay #FounderJourney #PayByBank
Hello UK founders,
I’m looking to connect with founders within the UK especially in the North East to share ideas, practice pitching, review messaging, partner and general networking.
Looking to have the first meet in Manchester in October, if you are interested or know someone I should reach out to please send a DM
I've been following @thedankoe for a while and had this article bookmarked but only just got to read it today and man... I miss the days before AI writing took over the internet.
Thanks Dan, the content here is not only awesome but the writing? It's like finding fresh water after being stranded in a desert and having to drink your urine to survive. 👏👏👏
The second question follows naturally.
If the customer already carries their bank in their pocket today, why does a barber, a tattoo artist or a plumber still need to rent a terminal to get paid in person?
The terminal is there to read a card. If there is no card, there is nothing to read. A QR code or a link does the job.
That was the starting point for Briizpay and I'm going to tell the story of what happened next, one chapter a day (I hope so) starting this week, including the parts I got wrong. For example I expected the whole thing to take about 3-6 months. It didn't.
PART 2
The card system was designed in an era when the shop and the customer's bank had no way to talk to each other directly. Everything about it, the schemes, the acquirers, the terminals, exists to bridge that gap. It was brilliant engineering for its time and it still works remarkably well.
But the gap it was built to bridge has closed. In the UK, for example, every major bank now has an app, and regulation requires those banks to let customers approve a payment straight from their account (Open Banking). The customer's bank and the merchant's bank can now be connected in a single step.
When you remove the distance, you remove most of the cost. That's the whole idea behind Pay by Bank. It isn't an only a cheaper version of the card system. It's a shorter and faster route.
If you're looking at payment setups, here is why switching from traditional cards to Briizpay makes a huge difference:
Near-zero chargebacks: Drastically reduce friendly fraud and complex dispute headaches.
About a third of the cost: Cut your transaction overhead down to roughly a third of regular card processing, keeping more of your revenue.
Settlement in seconds: Funds hit your bank account in seconds, even on weekends and bank holidays.
Flexible customer discounts: Pass over what you save on fees as a discount to help your business stand out from the competition.
Let me know if you want to chat more about how it works!
🤖 Made with AI
If I were to start all over, I'd be a marketer.
I've spent the last 8 weeks learning how to run ads, source leads, send cold emails, manage replies etc and it has been nothing but humbling... marketing is HARD.
If I had been exposed to this type of details earlier, almost all the tools I had built would have been marketing related... CRM, lead sourcing, validation and enrichment, etc.
I've built about 4 tools already and still subscribed to even more... including Ahref and builtwit... which I used to see but never knew how expensive they were.
If you use Claude code, Codex or similar AI agents, I've just published an ads mcp tool that lets your AI agent to create and manage Google and Meta ads directly.
It's open source and available at github.com/gudlab/ads-mcp
Excited to announce that BriizPay now processes UK ecommerce payments at up to 65% less than regular card fees.
We are looking for our first cohort of UK online merchants to partner with.
If you run a store or know someone who does, drop a comment or send a DM!
PART 2
The card system was designed in an era when the shop and the customer's bank had no way to talk to each other directly. Everything about it, the schemes, the acquirers, the terminals, exists to bridge that gap. It was brilliant engineering for its time and it still works remarkably well.
But the gap it was built to bridge has closed. In the UK, for example, every major bank now has an app, and regulation requires those banks to let customers approve a payment straight from their account (Open Banking). The customer's bank and the merchant's bank can now be connected in a single step.
When you remove the distance, you remove most of the cost. That's the whole idea behind Pay by Bank. It isn't an only a cheaper version of the card system. It's a shorter and faster route.
About two years ago I started asking a question that I couldn't put down. Why does it cost a business money every time a customer pays them, and why does that cost grow with the size of the sale?
I've spent more than 20 years building solutions acros many sectors including payment and banking systems, so I knew the answer and it isn't greed.
A card payment passes through a lot of hands.
1. The customer's bank that issued the card. The card scheme.
2. The merchant's acquirer.
3. A processor or gateway.
4. Often an agent or reseller who sold the merchant the account,
5. and a terminal provider on top.
Every one of them does real work, carries real risk, and needs to be paid. Nobody in that chain is making a fortune on a single transaction. It's just a long chain.
So the question changed from "why are they charging so much" to "does the payment need to travel that far?"
UK shops still paying ~1.5% on cards, switch to or add BriizPay for:
No % cut for in-person payments.
From 0.4% for online stores.
Money in your bank in seconds, weekends too.
Reply or DM and I’ll give you 50 free payments for the next 2 months.
briizpay.com
🤖 Made with AI
UK shops still paying ~1.5% on cards, switch to or add BriizPay for:
No % cut for in-person payments.
From 0.4% for online stores.
Money in your bank in seconds, weekends too.
Reply or DM and I’ll give you 50 free payments for the next 2 months.
briizpay.com
🤖 Made with AI
Hi X
Looking for a £50K first check for briizpay.com to challenge GoCardless and card payment platforms for in-person and online payments using pay by bank.
Looking for intros or if you can write all or part of the cheque please my DMs are open
Dear X algorithm
I am looking for UK e-commerce, in-person and invoice-led business to help them save £1000s on card fees while offering near-instant settlements to their bank account even on weekends.
If you can help me connect with the right persons I’ll give them 50 free payments for the next 2 months to try out briizpay.com
If you run any of the following business and based in the UK, I am looking for few pilots to try 2 months free 0% transaction payments.
1. e-commerce
2. In-person business (spa/salon/barber/tattoo/aesthetics clinics etc)
3. Invoice-heavy business (lawyers/car sales, property mgt or agencies etc)
4. Startups that take payments (health/legal/fintech etc)
I’m 38.
Solo founder, husband and girl-dad to a 2yo based in Warrington, UK.
I am building a 0% transaction fee payments platform for e-com, invoice-led and in-person payments.
Looking to connect with fellow founders and potential clients and to grow my network
Ever built something as a software engineer and it’s working so well for you but yet you have no customers and just thinking how much someone’s life could be better if they used it?