Acquisition combines specialized AI expertise with PayNearMe’s platform, scale and reach to advance Payment Experience Management
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — PayNearMe, the fintech company pioneering Payment Experience Management (PEM), today announced that it has acquired the technology assets and hired the key employees of Marr Labs, an AI company that develops agentic solutions to automate voice, messaging and workflows in complex, regulated environments. This move strengthens PayNearMe’s ability to bring the advantages of agentic AI automation to its clients. The Marr Labs team brings deep, specialized expertise building and operating sophisticated AI systems at scale that complement PayNearMe’s existing product, engineering and AI teams.
Bringing Deep AI Experience to Payments at Scale
The combination brings together Marr Labs’ experience developing and deploying AI in real-world environments with the scale and reach of PayNearMe’s established payments platform. Founded in 2009, PayNearMe processes more than $50 billion in payments annually, with more than 20,000 businesses using the PayXM™ platform to manage the payment experience for their organizations and customers.
Marr Labs was founded in 2023 and backed by Y Combinator. Its team brings decades of combined AI experience, including development of technology that powered early Siri products. Marr Labs developed AI for demanding, highly regulated environments where reliability, compliance and user experience are critical. Its technology supported millions of customer interactions each month across leading financial services companies.
“PayNearMe has always focused on understanding and continuously improving the entire payment journey. AI provides powerful opportunities to further improve the experience delivered by our PayXM platform” said Danny Shader, founder and CEO of PayNearMe. “The Marr Labs team has proven its ability to build and deploy sophisticated AI systems at massive scale. Combining that expertise with PayNearMe’s deep understanding of our clients needs and challenges makes this combination so exciting.”
Applying AI Across the Entire Payment Experience
PayNearMe pioneered Payment Experience Management to holistically manage and improve the entire payment experience, from the moment a payment is requested through reconciliation. Through its PayXM platform, PayNearMe helps businesses improve the payment experience across customers, support and operations—accelerating payments and reducing the total cost of payment acceptance.
That end-to-end approach creates opportunities to apply AI across the payment journey, building on the platform and workflows PayNearMe has already established to address its clients’ needs.
“We’ve spent years building AI that can work reliably at scale, and wanted to put that experience to work where it could have the greatest impact,” said Dave Grannan, co-founder and CEO of Marr Labs. “PayNearMe has built a trusted platform serving thousands of businesses and has a deep understanding of the payment problems they need to solve. Joining PayNearMe gives our team the opportunity to bring what we’ve learned to a much broader market and help shape the future of payments.”
Beyond the Agent: The Future of AI in Payments
The potential of agentic AI lies in its ability to understand context, make decisions and act. In payments, realizing that potential requires AI to be deeply embedded into the payment experience.
“Agents provide only one part of the equation,” said Han Shu, co-founder and CTO of Marr Labs. “To take meaningful action, agents need access to the right data, business rules and workflows. And in payments, they have to operate reliably and within compliance requirements while maintaining natural conversational experience.”
Integrating agents directly into the PayXM platform is central to PayNearMe’s vision for the future of AI in payments. Rather than operating as a bolt-on, AI becomes part of the payment experience itself.
About PayNearMe
PayNearMe pioneered Payment Experience Management (PEM), the discipline of owning and continuously improving the entire payment experience, from request to reconciliation. Named one of CNBC’s World’s Top Fintech Companies for 2026, PayNearMe offers PayXM™, the industry’s first platform purpose-built for PEM. With PayXM, every touchpoint in the payment journey becomes easy—driving customer satisfaction, accelerating payments, and reducing the total cost of acceptance. The platform supports all major payment types and channels, from PayPal, Venmo, Cash App Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, cards and ACH to cash at more than 62,000 U.S. retail locations.
Thousands of businesses across industries, including consumer lending, credit unions, tolling, iGaming, and property management, rely on PayNearMe to manage the end-to-end payment experience with a single platform and integration.
About Marr Labs
Marr Labs built enterprise AI agents that automated voice, messaging and complex workflows for regulated industries. Its platform managed customer interactions from first contact through resolution, with compliance, security and auditability built into every step. Marr Labs was founded by conversational AI pioneers Dave Grannan, Han Shu and Ghinwa Choueiter, whose earlier work at Vlingo helped power the first Siri app and Samsung’s S Voice.
SOURCE PayNearMe