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Education

StreetSmarts SM

My evolution and product-led growth

By Nick Cucci I was at NMI for 12 years, wearing many hats (under the
Fluid Pay LLC director of marketing title) and gaining valuable industry
experience while assisting in developing new products.
I exited NMI after its initial sale in 2014. I then gained
Editor's note: We are thrilled to publish Nick Cucci’s first article as
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Street Smarts author. He’s a consummate, generous, incisive profes- experience as a merchant from 2014 to 2018 when our
family bought a Ford dealership in East Dundee, Ill.,
sional whom we’ve had the pleasure of working with through the years. naming it Cucci Ford.
Helming this column, he’ll offer advice and experiences that will make a
difference in the day-to-day efforts of ISOs and MLSs. The start of Fluid Pay
i, I'm Nick Cucci, and I'll be your Street After dealing with a disastrous, disorganized payments
Smarts writer for the next 12 months. I'm experience at the Ford store, Jeff Rooney, Fluid Pay co-
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excited and honored to be writing this col- founder, and I decided we wanted to build our own
H umn for The Green Sheet. I've published more gateway. We were tired of using multiple systems to
than 60 articles for this magazine, spanning back to my accomplish a single task, and we questioned why so many
Network Merchant Inc. (NMI) days in 2009. pieces of software were needed instead of just having
everything in one place. We'd seen first-hand what growth
A fortuitous start by acquisition meant and did not want our new company
I began my career working for my father who, with James to be forced into old industry standards and become a
T. McKenzie, co-founded NMI. I was blessed to have had dinosaur.
great mentors and people around me before and after
college. (Thanks, Dad! You and Mom played major roles In 2017, Jeff and I started working out of a little plane
in helping your children find our footing and always held hangar office at the DuPage Airport in West Chicago, Ill.
us accountable.) This support guided the trajectory for my It was 10' x 10' and looked stuck in the '80s. Our renovation
family and me. options were limited, but the office's size and decor never
stopped us. We quickly began building what is now Fluid
I graduated from Benedictine University in 2009 with Pay LLC. And we met numerous nice people and saw
degrees in English language and literature, and a minor in some amazing planes along the way.
biochemistry. I quickly became a certified fraud examiner
from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and We've since grown tremendously, moving from a plane
served on the organization's advisory council as well. I hangar in Illinois to a large office in Franklin, Tenn.
also met my wife and best friend Jessica at Benedictine. Our company was just named Top Payment Processing
We have two children, Rosalia (5 years) and Nico (2 years), Company of 2022 by Banking CIO Outlook magazine.
and two German shepherds, Ari and Donnie.
Sharing the conviction that the payments space has
become too complicated and complex, our goal is to

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