PAYSTRAX is a fast-growing Payment Card Acquirer known for its solution-oriented mindset, strong risk management, and close collaboration with merchants and partners. Registered in 2018, the company began providing acquiring services in 2021 and has rapidly emerged as a trusted competitive force in the payments landscape.
Today, PAYSTRAX operates from four international offices – in Lithuania (Vilnius and Klaipėda), Iceland and the UK – with a team of over 100 employees. This relatively young team has driven the company’s rapid growth while ensuring strict regulatory adherence.
As a licensed payment institution in both Lithuania and the UK, supervised by national authorities, and as a Principal Member of Mastercard and VISA, PAYSTRAX holds a strong position in the payments value chain, combining agility with regulatory reliability to support complex clients with tailored, customer-centric solutions.
PAYSTRAX has built up a successful partnership with Maxcode, relying on their development expertise to help deliver robust functionality including a feature rich dashboard for its merchants and partners. In this interview, we speak with Gunnar Mar Gunnarsson, CTO and co-founder of PAYSTRAX, and Raimundas Asauskas, Service Delivery Manager, about how PAYSTRAX delivers on its promise to merchants every day.
What’s going on in the fast-moving payment space right now, and how does fintech play a role?
Gunnar Mar Gunnarsson (GMG): “AI adoption will be a key differentiator among leading players in the coming years. Integrating AI into areas like customer onboarding, compliance, risk management, and portfolio management will be crucial for FinTech companies to stay competitive. With the rising demands for compliance, we have entered the era of Regulatory Technology, which will depend heavily on AI to keep up with evolving requirements.”
What makes PAYSTRAX’s approach to acquiring and payment processing unique?
Raimundas Asauskas (RA): “Marked by strategic collaborations with industry leaders like Fiserv and ACI Worldwide, we have embraced a partnership-centric operational model in which we focus on each customer and adapt to their specific needs. This has been pivotal in delivering tangible benefits and optimal outcomes for our customers, and in accelerating our growth trajectory. As we continue to evolve and expand, this partnership-driven model remains a cornerstone of our commitment to innovation, efficiency and sustained growth. By forging strategic alliances with industry giants as well as nimble innovators and trailblazing upstarts, PAYSTRAX ensures continuous access to the latest technologies, regulatory insights, and emerging market trends.”
What have been the key challenges for your company, and how have you addressed them?
RA: “Navigating the dynamic landscape of the fintech industry calls for resilience, and the ability to stay ahead of the curve and consistently deliver value to customers. Through the deliberate outsourcing of core IT infrastructure, we have achieved unparalleled operational efficiency and scalability. Moreover, the sustainability of this approach is underscored by its adaptability.
Recently at PAYSTRAX, one of our priorities was to enhance the user experience both for our partners and for merchants by giving them simple, efficient and comprehensive access to transactional data and services. Specifically, we aimed to build a system and dashboard that would allow access to detailed transactional data, downloadable reports, dependable Business Intelligence and facilitate the onboarding of new merchants – a seamless way to apply for services and work with data.
However, building such a system from the ground up is a major undertaking. We needed to deliver quickly without compromising on quality. Hiring a full in-house development team would have taken time and resources, especially given the specific technical skills and fintech experience we were seeking. To overcome this, we began exploring outsourcing options – not just to fill gaps, but to find a team that shared our vision. That’s when the experienced Maxcode team first came into the picture.”
How else has your collaboration with Maxcode supported your technology and product development?
RA: “Maxcode didn’t just provide developers – the company became a true collaborative partner. Right from the start, the Maxcode team actively contributed ideas, enhanced our dashboard architecture and demonstrated flexibility in adapting to our evolving needs. Their ability to quickly understand our requirements, suggest smart improvements and implement secure, scalable backend services made a significant positive impact, enabling us to accelerate delivery while maintaining high quality. Since then, our collaboration has expanded. We’re now working with Maxcode not only on the system and dashboard, but also on several other projects.”
What are PAYSTRAX’s main priorities and ambitions for the next 12-18 months?
GMG: “In the coming months, we will focus on our customer experience. We will be expanding our product portfolio and attracting new clients through partner, payment facilitator and independent software vendor relationships. We are also advancing with our payment orchestration platform to strengthen and enhance our gateway and processing capabilities. Looking ahead, PAYSTRAX will continue to deliver competitive, flexible and scalable payment solutions tailored to the diverse needs of our clients.”
