Pago
Tap-to-pay terminal for street vendors and pop-ups. Same-day payouts, no monthly fee.
by Eli Frost
Problem
Top 3 problems your customers face
Square's payout schedule is too slow
Vendors restock inventory daily and can't float two days of card sales.
Existing terminals require monthly fees
$29/mo plus $30 hardware is dead weight on a pop-up doing $400/week.
Cash-only loses sales
20-30% of customers under 30 don't carry cash at all anymore.
Solution
Top 3 features that solve these problems
NFC tap-to-pay native app
Vendor opens app, types amount, customer taps. No dongle, no Bluetooth pairing.
Daily push-to-debit payout
Funds land in vendor's debit card by 6pm local. Built on Stripe Treasury.
Receipt by SMS or skip
No printer, no e-mail capture pressure.
Unique Value Proposition
Single, clear, compelling message that states why you are different and worth paying attention
Tap to pay on the phone you already own
Skip the dongle. iPhone or Android NFC reader, $0 hardware.
Money in your account by 6pm
Push-to-debit payouts settle same business day, every day.
Unfair Advantage
Something that cannot be easily copied or bought
Same-day payout is a compliance moat
Took us 11 months to land bank sponsorship. Late entrants can't shortcut this.
Hyper-local feet on the ground
Market managers know our reps by name. Cannot be replicated by a Shopify ad.
Channels
Path to customers
Direct sales at the market itself
Walk farmers' markets on Saturdays; sign up 4–6 vendors per market.
Market manager partnerships
Market managers get $20/vendor referral and warm-intro every vendor.
Restaurant supply distributors
Bundle with food-cart hardware vendors as a co-marketed insert.
Customer Segments
Target customers and early adopters
Farmers' market vendors
Show up Saturday, gone by 2pm. Need a terminal that fits in an apron.
Food cart operators
High volume of small tickets ($6–$14). Speed at checkout matters more than features.
Craft fair sellers
Touring 12 weekends a year. Predictable seasonality.
Key Metrics
Key activities you measure
Activated vendors / week / market
If we sign up <3 vendors per market visit, the unit economics break.
Volume per vendor in week 4
Predicts whether they're still active in month 6. Target $800/wk.
Cost Structure
Customer Acquisition Costs, Distribution Costs, Hosting, People, etc.
Stripe Treasury & interchange
~1.8% blended cost of funds + processing.
Compliance & KYC
$22K/yr Persona seats + a fractional compliance counsel.
Market-walker contractors
$80/market for 1099 reps in 8 cities. Scales with market count, not vendor count.
Revenue Streams
Revenue Model, Lifetime Value, Revenue, Gross Margin
2.6% + $0.10 per tap
Standard card-present rates. We make ~80bps after interchange.
$1 instant-payout fee (waived for daily)
Daily payouts are free; on-demand within the hour costs $1.