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June 29, 2023

Founder's Story: Frank Arellano

CEO of Revolv3

Frank’s background

Frank Arellano, CEO of Revolv3, has a rich history in business, with both startup and corporate experience. During his 25+ years in business, Frank has strategically led a multi-billion dollar acquisition integration program, established a global technology management office, and devised strategic plans to enhance internal processes for better performance and productivity.

As a creator and entrepreneur by nature, Frank spent the early stages of his career looking for startup opportunities.

Backtracking to his college years, Frank founded his very first company, which focused on CRM. This he later sold to spend his time on other projects. Whilst exploring the beginning of startup life and getting accustomed to the workings thereof, Frank found his next company that specialized in Networking and Web Servers. This was during the early days of the Internet.

A notable period in Frank’s early career was the work he did for New Media Corp, which was the first PCMCIA card manufacturer (AKA PC Card). Frank ran product for them and helped release the first SCSI, sound card, and other portable peripherals.

Although intrigued by the startup scene, Frank expanded his experience by moving into corporate America for 20 years - before pursuing his startup vision in full capacity. It was also whilst working in corporate that Frank became aware of a critical market gap that was costing companies big bucks to fix.

The problem

Whilst working at Experian, where Frank led the evaluation team tasked with finding solutions to address false decline issues faced by large subscription businesses, he realized that there was no adequate solution available in the market to tackle this problem. Despite trying multiple leading package solutions and exploring what other large corporations were using, it became clear that there wasn't a good solution for subscription businesses.

“As an executive at multiple Fortune 500 companies, I noticed that recurring billing had an unusually high customer churn rate that’s associated with credit card declines. So, I tried to find a solution on the market and tried multiple 3rd-party payment platforms - all of which failed to solve the problem.”

- Frank Arellano, Founder & CEO at Revolv3

Due to the lack of an adequate solution, Frank built his own! At the time, Experian had a system in place to combat decline issues. However, Frank assisted to shore up the system - overseeing his dedicated team to enhance the results. Despite the efforts, the solution failed, and Frank spearheaded the decision to build a new system. With great success, Experian’s collection rates rocketed from a low 70% to a high 90%!

Although introducing the new solution to Experian, Frank left the company prior to the new system going live to pursue his own initiative - reentering the startup scene. With the success from Experian’s new system, Frank identified the market opportunity to build a system that both small and large enterprises could use.

The A-Ha moment

The realization that there’s a market gap for payment optimization and orchestration tools that truly mitigate false declines and improve approval rates ignited Frank’s entrepreneurial spirit and led him to embark on a journey to create a platform that could address this issue head-on.

“After confirming with a lot of other enterprises about what they were using, and armed with lessons from the failed implementations, I concluded that there was a large market opportunity since corporate companies had to build their own bespoke systems and the cost to build and maintain was very high relative to what a third-party platform would cost.”

- Frank Arellano, Founder & CEO at Revolv3

With the vision of revolutionizing the subscription payments landscape, Frank founded Revolv3.

The solution

Revolv3 is a unique payment system that minimizes false declines and maximizes first-pass payment approvals. All at a fraction of the cost for a bespoke system.

What Revolv3 is aiming to do

The common thread in the subscription billing industry is that merchants, small businesses, and even some big corporations don’t have the resources - be it the capital, time, or the needed knowledge - to focus on improving their recurring billing payment capture. That’s why Revolv3 serves as an easy-to-use platform that does the work for its clients.

The core aim of Revolv3 is to increase approval rates for subscription businesses by offering a full-stack solution that’s tailored to meet the individual needs of each client. Revolv3’s platform does not only reduce churn, but also helps improve the customer experience by reducing friction points that customers might experience during the payment phase.

The team

Frank didn’t accomplish this entirely on his own. Through his experiences, Frank has gathered a mental inventory about what to do and what not to do in business. In his own words “you have to surround yourself with a network of people who back your ideas and ventures”.

To enhance his strengths and balance his weaknesses, Frank places a great deal of trust in his team - surrounding himself with people who have different strengths, with different personalities and characteristics. This diversity makes for a multi-versatile team - a strong backbone for startup success. For this reason, Frank started gathering his team. Introducing payments industry leader and former professional race car driver, Robert Podlesni, who joined in on Frank’s journey of building Revolv3.

Frank and Robert (who is currently CPO at Revolv3) are accompanied by David Paul, CMO of Revolv3, with over 35 years of IBM marketing and sales experience. And finally, with over 25 years of Tech experience and operating as CTO, Anastasio Scalisi is sharing his expertise with Revolv3’s leadership team.

With a multi-versatile team experienced in corporate leadership, startup culture, and the tech scene, Revolv3 is gearing up to play in the big leagues - bringing a versatile product to market, fit for corporate entities and scaling subscription businesses alike. In the world of Banking and FinTech, it’s no easy task to rejuvenate the market as a newcomer. This, however is not stopping Frank’s vision of “the small guy building and scaling to billion-dollar valuations”.

Frank Arellano's vision and entrepreneurial drive fuels Revolv3's success, making it a pioneering force in the Fintech and SaaS landscape. Together with the Revolv3 team, Frank is driven by the mission to empower businesses with a re-architectured payment process.

Revolv3 is redefining the PayTech landscape, taking the lead in ushering in a new era of subscription culture and helping merchants, marketplaces, ISVs, and multiple other entities get familiar with next-gen payment solutions. Frank’s vision of “do what’s right and fair for the merchant, and they will come” is both different and disruptive for the industry and is already paying dividends.

The key impact of Revolv3

Revolv3 has been making waves in the SaaS, FinTech and PayTech industries since its inception, providing a unique solution to the long-standing problem of false declines and customer churn. By leveraging the power of machine learning to develop a versatile subscription management system, Revolv3 has achieved remarkable results in improving approval rates for subscription businesses.

Through its adaptive technology, dynamic routing capabilities, and Revolv3’s ability to directly integrate with leading payment processing companies like Adeyn and Worldpay, Revolv3 has been able to unlock new opportunities for businesses to optimize their subscription payments and reduce false declines, leading to higher revenue generation and greater customer retention.

How Revolv3 is making a positive change in the industry

Frank's experience in both startups and corporations has given him a deep understanding of the pain points faced by businesses in this space. By building Revolv3 as a dynamic solution, the startup has emerged as a young leader in the PayTech industry, providing businesses with a reliable, efficient, and scalable platform to optimize their subscription payments.

Revolv3's innovative approach to tackling false declines is already proven to be a game-changer for the subscription payments industry. Their mission is to disrupt the payment ecosystem with innovative breakthrough technology and thinking for the betterment of the payment system and of the merchants who rely on it.

In addition, Revolv3 allows merchants and ISV platforms to focus on their core business. This whilst benefiting from ongoing recommendations and updates from an experienced payment orchestration and optimization partner. With Revolv3, merchants and ISVs receive the support they need from people who truly care about the client’s business.

Revolv3

Founded in 2020, Revolv3 is a full stack SaaS payment orchestration and optimization platform for subscription billing utilizing adaptive technology to deliver the industry’s highest credit card acceptance rates, solving the long-standing issue of false declines. Their seamless integration enables merchants to instantly achieve transformational revenue growth and superior customer retention at the lowest cost in the industry.

Revolv3 is a full-service subscription management platform - supporting our clients in achieving a frictionless transaction approval process. Since Revolv3 wants to reduce card processing fees for our clients, clients only pay for successful transactions. This unparalleled approach to card processing makes Revolv3 the only recurring billing platform that is solely focused on payment orchestration and optimization.

Revolv3 empowers businesses of all sizes to optimize their subscription payments, leading to higher revenue generation and improved customer experience.

Neil Hodgson Coyle
Neil Hodgson-Coyle
Editorial chief at TechNews180
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