News
LawPay Announces LawPay Smart Spend, Powered by LawPay Visa Credit Card, First Business Credit Card and Spend Management Offering for the Legal Industry
Austin, Texas (February 28, 2024) — LawPay, a leading online payment solution for legal professionals, has announced the upcoming launch of LawPay Smart Spend, a new spend management solution to help firms effortlessly pay, track, and manage both firm and client expenses. LawPay Smart Spend will be powered by a new LawPay Visa SMB Credit Card embedded directly within the LawPay platform.
"We are so excited to officially announce LawPay Smart Spend. This is our latest investment in embedded fintech that has a real impact on the financial well-being of our customers," said Dru Armstrong, Chief Executive Officer of AffiniPay, parent company of LawPay. "Lawyers lose money every year on reimbursable case costs. This new offering will save firms time and improve their bottom line. LawPay Smart Spend is the first of its kind and we are thrilled to provide this offering to our customers."
In a study done with 95,000 firms, the average monthly firm spend ranged from $5,000-$20,000, not including payroll. LawPay Smart Spend will allow legal professionals to make purchases, set spend limits, capture receipts, get real-time insights into firm spending, and seamlessly add reimbursable expenses to client invoices.
"The launch of our spend management solution is the result of our relentless focus on increasing efficiency for our customers," said Bryan Thompson, Chief Technology Officer of AffiniPay. "This is another significant step in our commitment to innovation."
The launch of Smart Spend will make AffiniPay the only comprehensive solution in the legal industry to offer a single destination for firm operations and spend management from start to finish. Future releases of AffiniPay's spend management offerings include:
This product announcement follows months of in-depth analysis and research with our customers about the pain and stress they experience today:
"I live in abject terror of [staff] forgetting to put this in [MyCase management tool], because if they forget, I will not get paid back. And if I gave away $700 to make $550, we're all going to be unemployed," one current customer said.
AffiniPay is partnering with Visa and Marqeta to bring this product to the large market of legal professionals. Marqeta is a global modern card issuing platform that enables embedded finance capabilities and is a trusted platform for building card programs that are dynamic, flexible and tailored to customer needs.
By partnering with Marqeta, Smart Spend users will have access to real-time card issuing, transaction data, and spend controls for their credit card offering to help stay on top of business expenses and access capital more easily. Visa is a world leader in digital payments. With Innovation at the core of its business, Visa enables fintechs with the scale and expertise needed to navigate the complexities of digital payments. Visa is providing LawPay Smart Spend users with access to its global, secure network and innovative payments solutions, while collaborating with AffiniPay to promote a seamless co-branded card issuance experience.
"Visa is pleased to serve as the payment network powering LawPay Smart Spend, an innovative spend management solution with an embedded co-branded credit card featuring a unique value proposition designed to directly address the needs of AffiniPay's clients," said Jack Funda, Global Head of Business Development & Partnerships at Visa.
"Marqeta simplifies the process of building a custom credit card program from the ground up, complete with program management capabilities that makes it much more seamless for businesses in any industry to launch branded credit cards that can be finely tailored to the needs of its end users," said Todd Pollak, Chief Revenue Officer, Marqeta. "We're proud to partner with the forward-thinking team at AffiniPay to bring this new product to market, and help their legal customers easily spin up cards for new employees, more easily manage expenses and gain business intelligence with a more holistic view into their financials."
For more information on how to join the waitlist and get regular updates for LawPay Smart Spend, which will be available to all LawPay customers later this year, please visit: here
About LawPay
LawPay is the industry leader in legal payments with the broadest range of payment options such as Pay Later, eCheck, and surcharging. LawPay provides a cost-effective solution for more than 55,000 law firms around the U.S. and Canada. LawPay is recommended by all 50 state bars, 60+ local and specialty bars and the ABA as a vetted and approved payment solution for the legal industry. LawPay is also the ALA's Exclusive VIP Partner for Payment Processing. Learn more at lawpay.com.
About AffiniPay
AffiniPay is a market leader in practice management software and online payments for professionals serving legal, accounting, architectural, engineering, and construction firms. AffiniPay has been recognized as one of Inc. 5000's fastest-growing companies for 12 years in a row. Each of its brands leads the market it serves with solutions purpose-built by industry including LawPay, MyCase, CASEpeer, Docketwise, CPACharge, and AffiniPay for Associations. AffiniPay's solutions are trusted by more than 245,000 legal & accounting professionals with more than 150 strategic partnerships and endorsements, including the American Bar Association and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Visit affinipay.com to learn more.