Captiv8 Perfects their Partner Experience with Embedded Payments

San Mateo, CA

Customer Since 2020

Industry Marketing Services

• Saved dozens of hours a month on validating and re-validating payment accuracy
• Automated tax compliance with a simplified, digitized onboarding experience for creators
• Simplified creator payments with FX conversion payouts

Captiv8, a leading influencer marketing platform in the US, empowers brands and creators to deliver authentic branded content on social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. The platform is powered by artificial intelligence and proprietary data science models that connect brands with creators to reach their target audience.

Captiv8’s Product Manager, Cynthia Davis, shares how their team defines ‘creators’: “We’ve seen this shift to an authentic interaction that gives creativity and power to the creators—anybody is a creator, whether you have 100 followers or 100,000 followers, you have an audience, and the content you put out makes you a creator, and your audience trusts you.”

Within Captiv8’s platform, creators can connect with brands and agencies on marketing campaigns, negotiate terms, and get paid—all in one place. In 2021 alone, Captiv8 delivered over $10 million in payments to creators. However, as the platform scaled, manually delivering payments became tenuous for the team

Before deciding we wanted to use Tipalti, payments were a tedious and manual process; our in-house managed services team was manually paying creators. After looking at a number of options, we decided that Tipalti would be the best partner for our long-term growth because we could embed the tool into our own APIs.

To add to the complexity of manual payments, Captiv8 was juggling multiple currencies, including USD, EUR, GBP, and AUD. Tipalti’s API allowed Captiv8 to cater to their creator’s needs and pay out in their preferred currency using their preferred method. This has not only made the experience better for creators; it’s also decreased friction for the Captiv8 team.

Integrating into Tipalti’s API has given our team confidence that creator payments will run smoothly. We can also add new creators from around the world to our platform without worrying about how they’d like to be paid. For me personally, I’ve been able to save dozens of hours a month on validating and re-validating payment accuracy since implementing Tipalti.

As new creators are onboarded, the Captiv8 team captures tax forms and automatically generates 1099s via the Tipalti platform, saving time for their finance team come tax season. Davis shared, “in this latest round, it only took [our finance team] a day to do all of the tax forms for the [millions] that we ran through the platform in the last year.”

Outside of time saved, Davis gained valuable experience through the implementation process that ultimately impacted the direction of her career.

“It was exciting to be a part of the project, and it was my first product launch. After the implementation, I eventually transitioned into product full-time. Creator payments in Captiv8 is something that I feel has really informed my career; something I love, and I’ve been very happy to be a part of,” Davis explains.

The story so far?

Tipalti is integral to our future growth; we’ve embedded Tipalti’s payments engine into our influencer marketing platform to help curate a best-in-class partner experience for our influencer community. At Captiv8, we pride ourselves on building cutting-edge technology to help brands and agencies with their influencer marketing campaigns.