Prepared: June 2026 · Basis: Public sources only · Type: Independent company profile for investment screening
Overview: Soap (Soap Payments, paywithsoap.com) is a New York–based, AI-native payments-and-compliance infrastructure company that launched with an explicit gaming focus — positioning itself as “gaming payments & compliance, all in one place.” It provides merchants and processors with unified payment rails (fiat and crypto), AI-driven transaction routing, fraud prevention, chargeback handling, onboarding, and compliance automation. Its core thesis is that complex, regulated payment operations can be scaled through AI without scaling headcount at the same pace. While gaming/iGaming is its initial wedge, the company has begun expanding into other complex, regulated verticals (notably online health).
1. Snapshot
| Field | Detail | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Soap / Soap Payments (paywithsoap.com) | High |
| HQ | New York, NY | High |
| Founded | 2024 | High |
| Co-founders | Filip Michalsky, Sam Edelstein (Tyler Carlin also named as a core team member) | High |
| Team size | Very small (reported ~3 around early 2026; growing) | Med |
| Stage | Pre-seed | High |
| Disclosed funding | ~$200K (PitchBook); Antler named as investor; Astralis Capital Management also referenced as a backer | Med |
| Initial vertical | Gaming / iGaming payments & compliance | High |
| Expansion vertical | Online health payments (from ~April 2026) | Med-High |
| Estimated value | No valuation disclosed | n/a |
2. Business & Product
What it does. Soap is a payment-infrastructure and compliance platform with AI-powered workflows, sitting between merchants and the broader payments ecosystem. Its capabilities, per public sources, include:
- Unified payment rails — combined fiat and crypto rails for settlement and global reach, with transaction routing across providers.
- AI payment reviews — real-time transaction review where lower-risk transactions move faster and edge cases are escalated with AI-generated summaries for quicker human decisions.
- AI chargeback representments — automatic generation of evidence-backed representment reports (using merchant data, customer geolocation, KYC, platform activity, and transaction context) to recover funds lost to “friendly fraud.”
- Compliance and fraud automation — automated compliance and chargeback prevention, onboarding, and fraud screening.
- Operator-oriented features — global card-rail support across multiple regions (including support for gaming merchants outside the US), dynamic pricing for real-time discounts/offers, and subscriptions (added for the health vertical).
Positioning. The defining pitch is “AI-native” infrastructure for complex, regulated payments — a domain where compliance, cross-border rules, and fraud make operations expensive and headcount-heavy. Soap’s value proposition is letting merchants scale payment operations without scaling staff proportionally. Gaming was the launch wedge because it concentrates exactly these difficulties (regulation, chargebacks, cross-border, crypto).
3. Financials & Traction
Unusually for a pre-seed company, the founders have publicly shared specific growth metrics. These are company-stated and unaudited, but they are concrete and recent:
- Revenue growth: reported as 6x from the start of its growth ramp (around October 2025) through the end of April 2026, and described as continuing to accelerate.
- Processing volume: reported 43% month-over-month growth in total processing volume (March 2026 update).
- Vertical expansion: entered the online-health payments market around April 2026, framing it as another large, regulated, complex-payments domain suited to its AI-native approach.
- Product velocity: rapid shipping cadence (AI payment reviews, AI chargeback representments, global card rails, dynamic pricing, subscriptions) for a very small team.
Funding. Public databases indicate a small early raise — PitchBook lists ~$200K with Antler (a global early-stage venture firm/accelerator) as an investor; Astralis Capital Management has also publicly expressed support for the founding team. The modest disclosed capital alongside fast revenue growth suggests a capital-efficient, traction-led early profile, though the full funding picture should be confirmed.
4. Team
| Person | Role | Background (per public sources) |
|---|---|---|
| Filip Michalsky | Co-Founder | Master’s in Computational Science & Engineering (Harvard); career focused on training, deploying, and scaling AI; prior experience associated with Antler and other AI ventures. Public face of the launch. |
| Sam Edelstein | Co-Founder | Co-founder; active in the company’s public updates and growth communications. |
| Tyler Carlin | Core team | Named alongside the founders as part of the team being backed. |
The founding profile — an AI-engineering-led co-founder paired with operating partners — is well matched to an “AI-native payments” thesis. The team is very small, so execution capacity and key-person dependency are natural areas of focus.
5. Market & Competitive Position
- Category. Soap sits in payment orchestration / payments-and-compliance infrastructure, a space widely flagged as strategically critical for iGaming in 2026 (payments increasingly treated as a driver of conversion, retention, and LTV rather than back-office plumbing). Within that, Soap’s differentiation is an AI-native approach and a gaming-first, compliance-heavy focus.
- Differentiation. The AI workflows (real-time payment reviews, automated chargeback representments) target concrete, costly pain points with measurable ROI, and the fiat+crypto rails suit gaming’s cross-border and crypto-adjacent needs. Early, fast revenue growth is itself a differentiator versus pre-revenue peers.
- Competitive pressures — significant. This is a crowded, well-capitalized field. Competitors range from large orchestration/acquiring platforms with strong iGaming positioning (e.g., Nuvei), white-label orchestration players (e.g., Akurateco, Gr4vy, Corefy), gaming-focused orchestrators (e.g., finera.), and horizontal giants (e.g., Stripe, whose ML-based “adaptive acceptance” overlaps with Soap’s routing/optimization claims), plus risk/compliance specialists (ComplyAdvantage, Riskified, Quantexa) cited as competitors. Soap is a tiny entrant against entrenched, deep-pocketed incumbents.
- Strategic question. Soap’s edge must come from being faster, more AI-native, and more tailored to regulated verticals than incumbents can be — and from converting early traction into defensible scale before larger players replicate the AI features. Its vertical expansion (gaming → health) signals ambition beyond gaming, which broadens the opportunity but also the competitive surface.
6. Diligence Considerations & Information Gaps
| Category | Publicly known | Open items to confirm |
|---|---|---|
| Financial | 6x revenue (Oct–Apr), 43% MoM volume growth (company-stated) | Absolute revenue and processing volume; gross margin / take rate; revenue quality and durability; burn and runway |
| Funding / structure | ~$200K (PitchBook); Antler; Astralis referenced | Full funding total and round structure; cap table; whether a larger seed has since closed; investor terms |
| Customers | Gaming merchants (multi-region); health merchants | Number and size of merchants; concentration; logos; retention; pipeline |
| Product / tech | AI reviews, AI chargeback representments, fiat+crypto rails | Proprietary IP vs. orchestration of third-party rails/models; accuracy and reliability; security posture |
| Compliance / regulatory | Compliance automation; multi-region gaming support | Licensing/PSP relationships; how compliance is delivered across jurisdictions; data handling/PII; AML controls |
| Team | 3 named; very small | Engineering depth; hiring plan; key-person dependency |
| Competitive moat | AI-native, gaming-first | Defensibility versus incumbents (Nuvei, Stripe, orchestrators) replicating AI features |
7. Summary Perspective
Strengths. A clear, AI-native wedge into one of iGaming’s most strategically important and pain-heavy areas (regulated payments and compliance); concrete, fast early traction that is rare at pre-seed (6x revenue, 43% MoM volume growth); a capital-efficient profile (significant growth on modest disclosed funding); a technically credible, AI-focused founding team; and a credible early backer in Antler. Demonstrated product velocity and an early vertical expansion (into online health) suggest both execution ability and a larger addressable market than gaming alone.
Risks and open questions. Disclosed funding and team size are very small, and the growth figures, while concrete, are self-reported and measured off an early base (percentage growth without disclosed absolute revenue). The competitive field is crowded and dominated by far larger, well-capitalized incumbents whose own ML/optimization features overlap with Soap’s, raising real questions about long-term defensibility. Customer count, concentration, margins, and the proprietary-vs-orchestration nature of the technology are not public. Regulatory/PSP relationships underpinning a payments business need careful verification.
Net perspective. Soap is an early but genuinely traction-led, AI-native payments-and-compliance company with a sensible gaming-first wedge and emerging multi-vertical ambition. It stands out in this cohort for showing real, fast revenue growth at pre-seed. Its decisive open questions are the absolute scale and durability of that revenue, the defensibility of its AI features against deep-pocketed incumbents, and the regulatory/PSP foundations of the business — answers to which would determine whether it is an emerging category challenger or an early mover vulnerable to incumbent replication.
8. Suggested Next Steps for Evaluators
- Get absolute financials — actual revenue and processing volume behind the percentage growth, plus take rate/gross margin and runway.
- Confirm the funding picture — total raised, round structure, cap table, and whether a larger seed has closed since the ~$200K listing.
- Assess customers — merchant count, size, concentration, retention, and pipeline across gaming and health.
- Test technical defensibility — proprietary IP versus orchestration of third-party rails and models, and the accuracy of the AI review/representment tools.
- Verify regulatory/PSP foundations — licensing, acquiring/PSP relationships, and compliance delivery across the jurisdictions it serves.
- Evaluate moat vs. incumbents — how Soap sustains differentiation as Nuvei, Stripe, and orchestrators expand AI-driven optimization.
Sources (public, accessed June 2026): paywithsoap.com and founders’ public updates (LinkedIn); Tracxn; PitchBook; industry payment-orchestration roundups (finera., Corefy, iLounge). Growth and funding figures are company-/database-reported and have not been independently verified; percentage growth figures are stated without disclosed absolute revenue. (Note: unrelated companies named “SoapBox Soaps” and “Soapbox” appear in some databases and are not this company.) This profile is a preliminary summary compiled from public information and is not investment advice or a recommendation.
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