City Hive Surpasses $1 Billion in Annual B2B Payments, Setting a New Standard for Embedded Payments in the Wholesale Alcohol Industry

The milestone marks a turning point for the wholesale industry seeking an integrated ordering system and ERP solution built for regulatory precision.

NEW YORK, March 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- City Hive, the all-in-one commerce and marketing platform for the three-tier alcohol industry, today announced it has surpassed $1 billion in annual B2B payments processed across its platform. Reaching this massive milestone just 526 days after launching its B2B payment platform signals a fundamental shift in how the wholesale industry transacts, reconciles, and reports.

Rather than acting as an external legacy payment utility, City Hive's B2B payment technology is uniquely positioned through its embedded nature. Because these embedded payments are integrated internally within the platform, administrators gain granular data access where every dollar is tied to a specific license, invoice, and compliance record, reconciled automatically and in real time.

"Surpassing $1 billion in annual B2B payments isn't just a number," said Roi Kliper, CEO of City Hive. "It's validation that the wholesale alcohol industry was ready for infrastructure that actually works with its regulatory framework, not around it. We built payments the way they should have always been built: embedded, compliant, and tied to every license and invoice in the system."

Built for the Wholesale Industry and the Three-Tier System

Building on its huge success as the industry's best retail solutions, City Hive's platform operates as a comprehensive wholesale solution and ordering system, architected from the ground up to serve the structural and legal realities of the U.S. three-tier alcohol system. Whether operating in traditional wholesale networks or the 17 control states, data integrity, brand sovereignty, and compliance precision are not optional features—they are operational requirements.

To meet these complex demands, the platform is highly adaptable: the system can be utilized as an integrated connection to any existing ERP or as its own ERP. Advancing this ecosystem in its 2026 roadmap, City Hive is embedding a local AI chat feature for distributors to instantly answer operational questions for stores. This innovation is powered by City Hive's broader Data Driven Commerce initiative, leveraging advanced CRM capabilities built on the connectivity of suppliers, wholesalers, and retailers and informed by over 12 billion tracked transactions.

Where traditional marketplace platforms aggregate retailers and distributors into shared storefronts—effectively displacing a brand's identity—City Hive operates as a true white-label solution. Every storefront, transaction, and data record belongs to the licensed operator, not the platform.

$1 Billion in Annual Smart Volume: What It Means

The $1 billion annual milestone reflects payments processed across City Hive's network of over 54,000 active merchants authorized to pay across 44 states. Each transaction in this volume carries structured data including product, license, invoice, and counterparty, enabling a level of auditability that external batch ACH processing cannot match.

For wholesale administrators and compliance officers, this embedded architecture translates directly into reduced overhead, fewer reconciliation exceptions, and a complete, defensible transaction record at the SKU and license level.

The Infrastructure Moment the Industry Has Been Waiting For

City Hive's announcement comes ahead of the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association (NABCA) Annual Conference in May 2026. The company will be present at NABCA to demonstrate how its embedded payments, ERP integrations, and wholesale solutions enable operators to modernize their digital infrastructure while retaining full brand identity and regulatory control.

"The question was never whether the wholesale industry needed to modernize," said Roi Kliper. "It was whether anyone would build the right foundation to do it on. Embedded payments, real-time reconciliation, and full compliance data at the SKU level — that's the foundation. Everything else builds on top of it."

About City Hive

City Hive is the leading omni-channel digital commerce and data platform for the alcohol industry, having surpassed $1 billion in annual B2B payments processed. Founded in 2014, the company has built a highly connected network linking tens of thousands of retailers, distributors, and suppliers through patented technology built for full three-tier compliance. By providing a comprehensive suite of tools including mobile apps, e-commerce websites, marketing automation, and payment infrastructure, City Hive empowers licensed operators to own their customer relationships and modernize their operations. Learn more at www.cityhive.net.

Media Contact: Marketing Team, City Hive [email protected]

SOURCE City Hive, Inc.