If you’ve ever utilized a vending machine or paid for a coffee without using cash, you have Nayax to thank. It began as a small start-up 20 years ago, and has since become one of Israel’s most successful fintech stories – processing about 3.5 billion transactions a year across 120 countries.
Founded by Yair Nechmad and David Ben-Avi in 2005 to enable digital payments in vending machines, it has since expanded to handle cashless payments on hundreds of other unattended payment machines supporting close to 100 digital methods, from credit cards to Apple Pay and Bit.
Nechmad, who comes from a marketing and general management background, recalled meeting Ben-Avi in 2004 when “he was already in the payment domain. The cellular provider was the trend and he wanted to look into SMS payments.” Together, they identified a market that was ripe for disruption: unattended vending machines.
“The main market was the unattended vending machines and he was trying to build a solution around that,” Nechmad told The Jerusalem Post. “I understood that it was a big deal and stepped in to be more and more involved in the company.”
In its early years, Nayax relied heavily on the Israeli market, which served as a testing ground for its technology. “At the beginning, it was relying on the Israeli market and that educated us as to what was really needed – we needed to connect to machines,” Nechmad says. But connecting was no simple task. “Unattended machines are already in the field accepting cash. There was no standard and we needed to understand all the moving parts. That required a lot of reverse engineering. Every machine is different and within the machines there are all sorts of different protocols.”
From those technical challenges emerged a platform that could integrate seamlessly with machines across industries and geographies. Over time, Nayax expanded globally, embedding its payment solutions directly at manufacturing sites so that when machines are shipped to their end-destination, “the customer just needs to pick up the phone to us to make it work.”
Societal shift
Nechmad has always emphasized the broader societal shift that Nayax is riding.
“We are the ones that at the end of the day, are riding a big trend that is not stopping — moving from cash to cashless. And cashless society is prevailing,” Nechmad said. “The COVID pandemic helped a lot in understanding we could live in a contactless society. Like a sandbox of remote and contactless payment — it pushed a lot of consumers to see it as the norm. The experience was much better too, it reduces friction during payment.”
He pointed to the evolution of payment methods as evidence of this unstoppable trend. “When you walk into a mall in Israel, you don’t have to carry cash or coins anymore, you take out your phone. When we started, people used to swipe; then pins; then tap and go, and now you use your phone.”
The implications for the global economy are profound, Nechmad continued.
“The whole economy, around the world, if moved back to cash, it will collapse. If I have to pay in cash people are more likely to be more aware of what they are spending. The more you move to cashless, you have more appetite to get products faster. It’s making the economy revolve much faster and in turn, more jobs are created, so at the end of the day, we have jobs and we can spend more.”
One-stop shop for cashless payments
Today, Nayax is one of Israel’s largest international fintech companies with around 1,200 employees. Headquartered in Israel, it operates in more than 120 countries, with revenue streams spread across Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, North America, and beyond.
Nechmad describes the company’s mission as building “a strategy to help customers serve consumers better without tech hassles. And if there is an issue, Nayax has a one-stop solution to take ownership of the issue and solve it.”
With some 600 R&D staff in Israel, Nayax is heavily investing in artificial intelligence (AI).
“We opened up a chief AI position to see how to integrate AI throughout the company and develop more AI tools,” Nechmad said. “We are optimizing inventory for customers using AI. The economy in the last 100 years has changed and many things are changing now because of digitization, and payment is part of that. It’s improving our lives.”
From its beginnings as a niche solution for vending machines to its current role as a publicly traded fintech leader, Nayax has become emblematic of Israel’s innovation economy.
As Nechmad put it, “We had to build something much more complex to address the consumer’s journey in various ways. The outcome was a platform that takes all the unattended protocols – and also acts as a payment facilitator that brings banks to us to help understand the customer.”
Two decades on, Nayax is not just a company; it is a reflection of the global shift toward a cashless, digital-first economy. And, as Nechmad insisted, that trend is only accelerating.