DriveCentric and Dealer Pay Partner to Unify Payments Within the CRM

ST. LOUIS, Mo. – January 19, 2026 – In a move signaling a significant shift toward fully integrated dealership operations, automotive CRM provider DriveCentric today announced a strategic partnership with Dealer Pay, a payments platform specializing in the auto industry. The collaboration will embed compliant payment collection capabilities directly into the DriveCentric CRM, aiming to create a seamless workflow from initial customer engagement to final revenue collection.

The integration, expected to be available in the first quarter of 2026, is designed to eliminate the operational friction caused by disconnected systems. Dealership staff will be able to manage the entire customer lifecycle, including taking payments for deposits, service, or parts, without leaving the CRM interface on desktop or mobile.

"As the premier customer-centric engagement platform, we believe CRMs should orchestrate the entire customer journey across every touchpoint and every department within the dealership," said Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentric, in the announcement. "By embedding payments directly into DriveCentric on both mobile and desktop, we're extending the CRM engagement lifecycle through the point of revenue collection— staying true to our core mission of driving better engagement."

Crucially, the partnership allows each company to focus on its core competency. DriveCentric will continue to enhance its engagement platform, while Dealer Pay, which is powered by automotive technology firm Vehlo, will provide the underlying compliant payment infrastructure.

The Drive for a Unified Digital Showroom

This partnership arrives as the automotive retail industry accelerates its departure from fragmented, siloed software. For years, dealerships have grappled with a patchwork of systems for customer relationship management (CRM), dealer management (DMS), and payment processing. This lack of integration is a well-documented source of inefficiency, leading to manual data re-entry, increased risk of errors, and significant time loss, with some industry reports suggesting that professionals can lose between five to ten hours per week managing these disconnects.

The consequences extend directly to the showroom floor and service drive. When sales or service staff have to switch between applications or walk to a separate terminal to process a payment, the customer experience becomes disjointed and slow. Recent studies have highlighted that over 70% of future car buyers expect to use an omnichannel approach, blending online and in-person interactions, making a smooth, tech-enabled process more critical than ever.

"Engagement alone isn't enough anymore," stated Julie Douglas, Founder and CEO of Dealer Pay. "Dealers expect systems to deliver outcomes. By partnering with DriveCentric, we bring payments expertise, compliance, and dealership controls into the CRM experience — completing the lifecycle so engagement doesn't stop short of revenue." This integration directly addresses the demand for tangible results, turning customer conversations within the CRM into completed, secure transactions.

Beyond Convenience: The Critical Role of Compliance

While streamlining workflows is a major benefit, the partnership’s emphasis on a "compliant payments platform" addresses a far more critical and complex challenge for modern dealerships. Processing payments in the automotive sector involves navigating a dense web of regulations and security standards designed to protect sensitive consumer data.

Dealer Pay's specialization is designed to lift this heavy burden from dealerships. This includes ensuring adherence to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), a mandatory set of rules for any organization that handles branded credit cards. Non-compliance can result in severe fines and catastrophic reputational damage. Furthermore, with consumer fraud losses reportedly exceeding $12.5 billion in 2024 according to Experian, robust fraud detection and prevention tools are no longer optional.

By integrating a purpose-built solution, dealerships can better protect themselves and their customers from these threats. The platform also helps manage compliance with federal regulations from bodies like the FTC and varying state-level auto dealer laws. This focus on security and regulatory adherence is central to building and maintaining brand trust in an era of heightened consumer awareness around data privacy. The partnership effectively outsources this complex risk management to a specialist, allowing dealership staff to focus on sales and service rather than regulatory minutiae.

Reshaping a Competitive Technology Landscape

The DriveCentric-Dealer Pay alliance also represents a strategic maneuver in the highly competitive automotive technology market. The industry has long been dominated by established DMS providers like CDK Global and Reynolds and Reynolds, which offer broad, albeit sometimes cumbersome, suites of products. More recently, cloud-native challengers like Tekion have gained market share by offering a single, end-to-end platform designed from the ground up to eliminate integration issues.

DriveCentric's strategy appears to be a "best-of-breed" approach, choosing to partner with a leader in a specialized field rather than attempting to build a payment solution in-house. This allows the company to remain agile and focused on its core strength—customer engagement—while providing dealers with a robust, expertly managed payment function. This model contrasts with the all-in-one approach of some competitors and leverages the growing ecosystem strategy of Dealer Pay's parent company, Vehlo, which has been actively acquiring and integrating various auto tech solutions to build a comprehensive, connected platform.

This partnership puts pressure on other CRM and DMS providers to deepen their own payment integration capabilities, as dealerships increasingly demand solutions that cover the entire customer journey without compromise. The collaboration will be a key topic of discussion at the upcoming NADA 2026 show, where both companies will hold a special session at the DriveCentric booth to detail the partnership's implications for dealership operations. As the industry continues its digital evolution, such deep integrations are poised to become the new standard for efficiency, security, and superior customer experience.