Paze Targets the 100 Biggest U.S. Merchants: Should You Add It?

On this page 7 sections

1. The Paze Top 100 Merchants Plan Announced at Money20/20 2026
2. Who Already Accepts Paze: Sephora, Dunkin', Bloomingdale's, United
3. Paze vs. Apple Pay, PayPal, Google Pay and Stripe Link
4. The Security Pitch: What Tokenized Bank-Card Checkout Means for Fraud and Disputes
5. Will a Fourth Wallet Button Help or Hurt Conversion?
6. How to Ask Your Processor or Gateway About Turning on Paze
7. Decision Checklist: Add Paze Now, Test It, or Wait

Key takeaways

• Paze works only at online checkout, so nothing changes at your counter terminal or POS.
• Early Warning is aiming its own sales effort at the 100 largest merchants. Smaller sellers get Paze through processors like Worldpay, Fiserv and Nuvei, which announced Paze support in 2025.
• Tokenization lowers your exposure to stolen-card fraud but doesn't stop friendly-fraud chargebacks. The Money20/20 coverage didn't say whether Paze shifts fraud liability, so ask your processor.
• Judge a Paze test by completed checkouts per session, not by how many Paze transactions you see.

Most small and midsize merchants can wait on Paze. It's worth testing, though, if your processor or gateway can switch it on without a new fee or a checkout rebuild. Early Warning Services, the bank-owned company behind Zelle, said at Money20/20 in Las Vegas this month that its immediate Paze target is the 100 largest U.S. merchants, Payments Dive reported on Oct. 22, 2026. That focus on the Paze top 100 merchants suggests Early Warning's own sales effort will center on the biggest retailers for now, not on independent stores.

Paze still matters to you. It runs on cards your customers already carry, it works only at online checkout, and it has started showing up in processor menus. So the question is whether one more wallet button belongs on your checkout page today.

The Paze Top 100 Merchants Plan Announced at Money20/20 2026

According to Payments Dive, Early Warning wants to win over the largest U.S. merchants within three years. The plan follows a 2025 overhaul of Paze's product strategy. CEO Cameron Fowler said the immediate focus is the 100 biggest. "We're interested in habituation of high-volume transactions right now," he told the publication. In plain terms, Early Warning wants shoppers to get used to paying with Paze at the stores where they buy most often.

A companion report in Banking Dive filled in the backstory. Serge Elkiner, a former Visa executive, became Paze's general manager in October 2024 and decided within a month that the original wallet needed an overhaul. He described low conversion and approval rates and too many screens. The team started over in May 2025 with a one-year schedule for the rebuild.

Paze wouldn't share financial or operating targets. Elkiner did say it is on track to hit four times its 2026 transaction goal. The goal itself was never made public, so the figure tells you about growth, not size. A spokesperson also had no immediate comment on how many of the top 100 have signed on.

The ownership explains the sales pitch. Early Warning is owned by seven banks: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, PNC, U.S. Bank, Truist and Capital One. Capital One's Paze page says the wallet comes pre-loaded with a shopper's eligible credit and debit cards and requires no new app, username or password.

Who Already Accepts Paze: Sephora, Dunkin', Bloomingdale's, United

Banking Dive names Bloomingdale's, Sephora, Dunkin' and United Airlines among the large merchants that accept Paze. The mix tells you something. A department store, a beauty chain, a coffee brand with heavy app and online ordering, and an airline all see lots of repeat purchases or high-value bookings. Faster checkout and card tokens pay off most in those businesses.

Scale has been Paze's problem. In late 2024, Payments Dive reported that a Paze operations executive put the count at 125 million connected cards and "thousands" of participating merchants. For a wallet meant to work at checkouts nationwide, thousands of merchants is a modest footprint. The October 2026 coverage didn't include newer counts.

Smaller merchants would get access through their processors. In 2025, Worldpay (June 4), Fiserv (June 17) and Nuvei (Sept. 8) each announced plans to offer Paze to merchants. If your account runs on one of those platforms, or on a gateway connected to them, Paze may already be available even if nobody has mentioned it to you.

Paze vs. Apple Pay, PayPal, Google Pay and Stripe Link

These buttons look alike on a checkout page. They reach different shoppers, though, and they don't all settle the same way.

Paze and Apple Pay protect the card number in a similar way: both send a token, a stand-in number, instead of the real one. Spreedly, a payments orchestration company, says neither charges merchants a direct wallet fee. Your processor or gateway may still price wallet transactions its own way. The bigger difference is reach. Apple Pay depends on the shopper's device, while Paze depends on the shopper's bank. U.S. News explains that first-time Paze users turn it on in an eligible banking app or website, then enter the email tied to that bank at checkout.

PayPal is the odd one out. A PayPal payment runs through PayPal's own account system, pricing and buyer-protection program. A Paze payment is a card payment, and it settles through your existing processor with the rest of your card sales. If you already accept the common wallets, our guide on which digital wallets to accept and why covers the trade-offs.

The Security Pitch: What Tokenized Bank-Card Checkout Means for Fraud and Disputes

Early Warning's owners pitch Paze as the safer choice. Capital One's explainer says Paze lets shoppers buy online without sharing their actual card number with the merchant, and U.S. News notes that it uses tokenization. For you, that means the real card number never reaches your site, so a breach of your systems exposes less. Shoppers also stop mistyping 16-digit card numbers, which causes declines you could have avoided.

Capital One also says the card numbers in a Paze wallet stay up to date automatically. That helps the shopper at checkout. If you run subscriptions or store cards for repeat billing, ask whether your processor passes those updates through to the credentials you keep on file. An outdated card means a failed charge and a customer you have to chase.

The marketing leaves out one thing. Tokenization mainly fights stolen-card fraud. It does little about friendly fraud, where the real cardholder says the package never arrived or doesn't recognize the charge. A Paze sale is still a Visa, Mastercard or other card-network transaction, so the cardholder keeps the same dispute rights under network rules. The Money20/20 coverage doesn't say whether Paze's authentication shifts fraud liability to the card issuer the way 3-D Secure authentication can. Until your processor confirms that in writing, assume your chargeback process stays the same.

Will a Fourth Wallet Button Help or Hurt Conversion?

A wallet button adds sales only when it saves a shopper who would otherwise abandon the cart. If a customer would have typed in the same Chase card anyway, a Paze order just moves a sale from one payment method to another. Every extra button also takes space above the card form, and a phone screen has little to spare. Elkiner himself said early Paze had low conversion, which is a good reason to measure the results rather than assume them.

Here is an illustrative example in which every number is an assumption. An online store does $40,000 a month across 800 orders, so the average order is $50. Suppose adding Paze raises completed checkouts by half a percent.

• 800 orders × 0.5% = 4 extra orders a month
• 4 orders × $50 = $200 in extra sales
• At a 40% gross margin, that's $80 a month in gross profit
• If setup takes $500 of developer time, it pays for itself in about 6 months ($500 ÷ $80 = 6.25)

If your platform lets you turn Paze on with a simple switch, setup costs almost nothing and the math is easy. If the extra button instead cuts conversion by the same half percent, you lose about $80 a month. So compare completed checkouts per checkout session before and after you add it. Don't count Paze transactions, because many of those orders would have happened anyway.

The math changes by industry. Travel sellers have big tickets and heavy fraud screening, so a tokenized checkout verified through the shopper's bank is worth more to them. That may be part of why United signed on. Restaurants should consider Paze only for online ordering, since it does nothing at the table. Retailers who sell mostly at the counter need no new hardware, because Paze doesn't touch your terminal. E-commerce stores with repeat buyers are the best fit for a test.

How to Ask Your Processor or Gateway About Turning on Paze

Send your processor or gateway these questions in writing, and keep the answers with your contract.

1. Is Paze supported on my exact setup, meaning my gateway, my e-commerce platform plugin and my hosted payment page?
2. What will it cost? Ask about wallet fees, gateway fees or per-transaction charges, and whether Paze sales are priced the same as other online card sales on my statement.
3. Can I report on Paze transactions separately so I can measure the conversion test?
4. Do token updates reach the cards I store for repeat or subscription billing?
5. Does Paze authentication change who carries fraud liability, and how will disputes on Paze sales reach me?
6. Can I turn it on for only part of my traffic, and switch it off quickly if conversion drops?

Vague answers tell you something too. Our list of questions to ask before choosing a payment processor covers the wider review. If you're rethinking your whole checkout setup, compare online payment processing options and payment gateways before you add another button.

Decision Checklist: Add Paze Now, Test It, or Wait

Test it now if most of your revenue comes from online sales, your processor offers Paze as a simple switch with no added fee, you can measure checkout conversion, and your buyers make repeat purchases or high-value bookings.

Wait if any of these apply: you sell mostly in person, your online volume is small, turning Paze on would take custom development, or your checkout already shows several wallet buttons and you can't cleanly measure the effect of one more.

Add it without testing only if your platform makes it free, easy to undo and visually unobtrusive. Even then, check your conversion rate a month later.

The thing to watch is how many of the 100 largest merchants Early Warning signs, and when. Once shoppers see the Paze button at the big retailers they visit every week, they'll start looking for it at smaller stores, and testing will make sense for nearly every online seller. Until then, send your processor the six questions above. If you want a second opinion on your online setup, request a free quote from MannyPay. A specialist will respond within one business day.

Sources

1. Payments Dive: Paze sets big targets after revamp (Oct. 22, 2026)
2. Banking Dive: Paze sets big targets after revamp
3. Payments Dive: Paze gets new leader amid slow start (2024)
4. Worldpay: Worldpay Enables Paze (June 4, 2025)
5. Early Warning: Fiserv and Early Warning Services collaborate on Paze (June 17, 2025)
6. Nuvei: Nuvei Partners with Early Warning Services to Deliver Paze (Sept. 8, 2025)
7. Capital One: Paze Wallet
8. Capital One: What Is Paze and How Does It Work?
9. U.S. News: What Is Paze? Everything You Need to Know
10. Spreedly: What Is Paze? The Bank-Backed Digital Wallet Merchants Should Know in 2026

AR

About the author

Adrian Reyes

Adrian Reyes is Senior Payments & Fintech Editor for Beyond the Swipe, covering credit card processing, merchant accounts, payment technology and processing fees.

This article is for general educational purposes and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Card network rules and state laws change; confirm current requirements for your business.