Craftgate

Craftgate Competitive Intelligence & Landscape

craftgate.io ·

Overview

Craftgate Overview

Craftgate is a financial technology company founded in 2020 and headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey. It specializes in providing a payment orchestration platform that enables businesses to manage and access both domestic and international payment methods through a single, integrated system (Tracxn). The company's core product is a cloud-based payment gateway that facilitates online payment processes, including payment links and QR code solutions, making it easier for merchants to accept payments globally (craftgate.io).

Craftgate targets e-commerce businesses, online merchants, and financial institutions seeking efficient, scalable, and secure payment management solutions. Its value proposition centers on simplifying complex payment integrations, reducing transaction friction, and expanding payment options for clients, which positions it as a key player in the fintech and payments industry (Tracxn). Since its founding, the company has grown rapidly, with a team of around 54 employees, and has secured $3 million in funding, including a seed round in August 2023 (craftgate.io). Its mission is to streamline and innovate the payment infrastructure landscape, supporting businesses in their digital transformation and global expansion efforts.

Competitors

Craftgate Competitors

PayU is a prominent competitor to Craftgate, especially in emerging markets, with a strong market position due to its extensive regional presence and diverse payment solutions. It secured significant funding in July 2025, which supports its growth and innovation efforts, making it a key player in online payments (Tracxn). In contrast, Flutterwave focuses on simplifying cross-border payments in Africa and other regions, offering a comprehensive platform that integrates payments, invoicing, and fraud management, positioning itself as a flexible alternative for businesses expanding internationally (Tracxn). Both PayU and Flutterwave differentiate themselves through regional expertise and tailored solutions, whereas Craftgate emphasizes its technology-driven approach in Turkey and nearby markets.

Iyzi Payments, another competitor, is a leading Turkish payment gateway that offers seamless integration with local e-commerce platforms and a variety of payment options, including installment payments. Its market focus on Turkey and strong local partnerships give it an edge in the domestic market, though it has a smaller international footprint compared to PayU and Flutterwave (Tracxn). Compared to Craftgate, Iyzi Payments is more regionally concentrated but shares a similar focus on providing comprehensive payment solutions tailored to local businesses.

Poynt is an emerging global player that offers smart payment terminals and integrated POS solutions, targeting retail and hospitality sectors. Its differentiation lies in hardware integration combined with payment processing, which appeals to physical stores looking for unified commerce solutions (StackReaction). While Craftgate primarily operates in online payment gateways, Poynt expands into hardware and in-store experiences, making it a broader competitor in the payments ecosystem.

Finally, Adyen stands out as a global payments platform with a broad feature set including fraud prevention, multi-currency processing, and extensive integrations. Its market positioning is premium, targeting large enterprises and high-volume merchants worldwide. Compared to Craftgate, Adyen offers a more extensive global reach and advanced features, but at a higher price point, which may limit its appeal to smaller regional businesses (SaaSipedia). Overall, these competitors vary in regional focus, feature depth, and pricing strategies, shaping the competitive landscape in which Craftgate operates.

Alternatives

Craftgate Alternatives

Product & Pricing

Craftgate Product and Pricing Intelligence

Craftgate offers a comprehensive payment and product management platform with detailed pricing plans. According to their latest information, their product management software, Craft.io, features a tiered pricing model with a free 14-day trial and no credit card required to start. The plans include a 'Starter' plan at $24 per editor/month (or $19 annually), a 'Pro' plan at $99 per editor/month (or $79 annually), and a customizable 'Enterprise' plan with pricing available upon request and a demo booking option (craft.io).

For their fintech and payment orchestration solutions, Craftgate provides a unified platform that simplifies payment operations, supports virtual POS systems, and integrates with various payment providers. They also offer a Shopify e-commerce module to enhance payment options for online stores. The platform emphasizes security, reliability, and scalability, catering to growing fintech needs (craftgate.io). Recent updates indicate a focus on expanding cross-border payment capabilities and enhancing trust and speed in online transactions, reflecting ongoing improvements in their payment infrastructure (blog.craftgate.io). Overall, Craftgate's pricing and product offerings are tailored to meet the needs of both small teams and large enterprises, with a clear progression towards more advanced features and integrations.

Hiring & Layoffs

Craftgate Hiring and Layoffs

Craftgate is a fintech company that offers a unified payment orchestration platform, founded in Turkey in 2020. As of early 2026, the company has 58 employees and has received $3.00M in seed funding. Their platform aims to simplify payment operations by managing virtual POS systems, e-money providers, and other payment methods from a single dashboard, offering benefits such as faster settlements and better commission rates (BounceWatch).

Regarding hiring, Craftgate is not in a hyper-growth phase and focuses on hiring the "right people" rather than just filling positions, as indicated by their 35-person team size in early 2025 (Craft Docs). More recently, in early January 2026, Craft (a separate entity from Craftgate) announced a significant shift towards an AI-first approach, integrating AI tools like Claude Code and Craft Agents into their core workflow for all team members. This has fundamentally changed their hiring process, with a new emphasis on how candidates collaborate with AI, requiring them to showcase personal projects built with AI assistance (Craft.do).

There is no direct information in the provided search results about Craftgate layoffs. However, broader industry trends in early 2026 suggest that job cuts in some sectors, like crypto, are being linked to AI integration, potentially masking routine layoffs (Decrypt, CryptoRank.io).

Craftgate itself has focused on improving operational efficiency, as seen in their adoption of Hiver for customer support, which saved them over 130 hours a month and helped them handle a growing volume of nearly 100 inquiries daily (Hiver). This focus on efficiency, rather than rapid expansion, suggests a strategy centered on optimizing existing operations and customer experience.

Leadership

Craftgate Management and Leadership Team

Craftgate is a B2B SaaS company that offers comprehensive payment orchestration services, allowing businesses to integrate and manage various payment providers from a single platform. Founded in 2020 and based in Turkey, Craftgate has grown to include 59 employees and operates within the Financial Services and Fintech industries. The company's core offering centralizes the management of all online store payment providers, enabling businesses to focus on growth while reducing costs [6, 7].

The Craftgate leadership team is comprised of its co-founders, who bring extensive experience in technology and entrepreneurship.

Hakan Erdoğan serves as the Co-founder and CEO, with a background spanning over 18 years in payment systems and e-commerce. He has been instrumental in developing multiple payment systems, including those for GittiGidiyor/eBay, iPara, and iyzico, before co-founding Craftgate in June 2020 [1, 2].

Murathan Özcan is a Co-Founder and COO, bringing expertise in sales, operations, and business development, and holds an Executive MBA from Istanbul Technical University [4].

Lemi Orhan Ergin is a Co-Founder, with a strong background in software development, Agile methodologies, and has held leadership roles at companies like iyzico and Sony, focusing on building high-quality software [5].

While the provided search results detail the co-founding team and their roles, specific information regarding recent leadership changes, additional board members, or notable C-suite hires beyond the co-founders is not extensively detailed. The company's "About Us" page lists several individuals, including Alican Akkuş, Avni Balıkcı, and Berfu Aydoğan, among others, suggesting a broader team, but their specific executive or board-level positions are not elaborated upon in the provided snippets [3].

Financials

Craftgate Financial Performance, Fundraising, M&A

Craftgate is a Turkish-based fintech company founded in 2020 that specializes in payment orchestration platforms. It enables businesses to manage multiple domestic and international payment methods through a centralized interface, improving operational efficiency and payment success rates (BounceWatch, Startup-Seeker). As of early 2026, Craftgate has raised approximately $3 million in seed funding, with notable investors including Hepsiburada.com and D4 Ventures (BounceWatch, Tracxn)). The company's valuation details are not publicly disclosed, but its funding stage remains at seed, indicating early-stage financial health with a focus on growth and product development (BounceWatch). Although specific revenue figures are not available, Craftgate's rapid growth, strategic funding, and expanding product offerings suggest a positive trajectory in the fintech and payment processing sectors. The company has also developed several open-source clients for API integration, supporting its technological and operational expansion (GitHub). No recent M&A activity or acquisitions are publicly reported as of March 2026.

Partnerships

Craftgate Partnerships, Clients and Vendors

Craftgate has established itself as a prominent player in the payment orchestration industry, offering a comprehensive platform that consolidates various payment methods into a single interface. Their platform supports both domestic and international payment options, enabling businesses to streamline their financial workflows and enhance conversion rates (craftgate.io).

In terms of partnerships, Craftgate actively promotes collaboration through its Partner Program, which is designed for agencies, consultants, and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) to grow together and expand their ecosystem (craftgate.io/en/become-a-partner). This program indicates a strategic focus on building a broad network of technology and service partners.

Craftgate's open-source initiatives further demonstrate their commitment to technology integration, providing libraries and tools for developers in Java, PHP, .NET, and Node.js to facilitate API integration and extend their platform's capabilities (craftgate.github.io). Their GitHub organization hosts numerous repositories, reflecting ongoing development and ecosystem engagement. Additionally, Craftgate maintains active relationships with enterprise clients and vendors, leveraging these integrations to deliver scalable, flexible payment solutions tailored to the needs of modern e-commerce and financial services (github.com/craftgate).

Events

Craftgate Event Participations

Based on the available search results, there is no specific information indicating that Craftgate participates in or hosts conferences, trade shows, webinars, or community events. The company, founded in 2020 in Turkey, specializes in payment orchestration and financial services, providing solutions for managing online payment providers (BounceWatch).

While the search results do not detail their event participation, Craftgate’s active presence in the fintech industry is evident through their platform offerings and educational content, such as a webinar explaining their 3D Secure payment flow (Speaker Deck). It’s possible they may engage in industry events or webinars to promote their services, but specific details are not available in the current search results.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Craftgate's stalled fundraising at a single $3M seed round signal about its financial runway and growth ambitions?

Craftgate has raised only $3M in a single seed round (closed August 2023), and as of early 2026 its funding stage remains at seed with no publicly reported follow-on rounds. For a payments infrastructure company now five years old, the absence of a Series A suggests either that the founders are deliberately running lean and profitable on transaction fees, or that they have faced difficulty attracting growth-stage capital. Investors Hepsiburada.com and D4 Ventures are notable — Hepsiburada is a major Turkish e-commerce platform — but neither signals the kind of institutional backing that typically funds aggressive international expansion.

What does Craftgate's deliberate 'hire the right people, not fill positions' approach — holding to ~35-58 employees over multiple years — imply about its operating model and scalability thesis?

Craftgate has kept its headcount in the 35–58 range across at least 2025 and early 2026, explicitly rejecting headcount-as-growth-signal in favor of a lean, high-output team. This suggests the company is betting on a software-margin model where payment orchestration infrastructure scales via API connections rather than people. The adoption of Hiver for customer support — which reportedly saved over 130 hours per month while handling ~100 daily inquiries — reinforces the pattern: operational leverage through tooling rather than hiring.

What does the co-founding team's prior pedigree at iyzico, GittiGidiyor/eBay, and Sony signal about Craftgate's product DNA and likely competitive advantages?

All three co-founders have deep roots in Turkish fintech and e-commerce. CEO Hakan Erdoğan spent 18+ years building payment systems at GittiGidiyor/eBay, iPara, and iyzico before founding Craftgate in June 2020. COO Murathan Özcan brings sales and operations experience, and CTO/Co-founder Lemi Orhan Ergin led engineering at iyzico and Sony. This pedigree suggests Craftgate was purpose-built by insiders who understood the specific pain points of Turkish payment infrastructure — virtual POS fragmentation, settlement delays, commission inefficiencies — giving it credibility and likely a strong enterprise sales network from day one.

How should a competitor read Craftgate's open-source strategy — publishing API clients in Java, PHP, .NET, and Node.js on GitHub — in terms of go-to-market intent?

Publishing open-source SDK libraries across four major developer ecosystems is a developer-led GTM play: it lowers integration friction to near zero for technical buyers and creates organic distribution through developer communities. For a seed-stage company with a small team, this is a capital-efficient substitute for a large sales force. It also signals that Craftgate is prioritizing self-serve, bottom-up adoption by e-commerce developers rather than top-down enterprise deals, which aligns with its lean headcount and efficiency-focused operating model.

What does Craftgate's Partner Program — targeting agencies, consultants, and PSPs — reveal about the distribution gap it's trying to close?

A partner program aimed at agencies, consultants, and Payment Service Providers indicates that Craftgate lacks the direct sales coverage to reach the long tail of SME merchants on its own. By recruiting third-party intermediaries to resell or integrate its orchestration layer, Craftgate is building an indirect channel that multiplies its market reach without proportionally scaling headcount. This is a common playbook for infrastructure fintech companies with strong product but limited GTM resources, and it suggests Craftgate views partner-sourced revenue as a primary growth lever in the near term.

What competitive risk does Craftgate face from iyzico's continued dominance in Turkey, given that its own co-founders built iyzico's payment systems?

Iyzico is identified as a direct domestic competitor with deep local e-commerce integrations and installment-payment capabilities that are critical in the Turkish market. Craftgate's co-founders — including CEO Erdoğan and co-founder Ergin — came directly from iyzico, which is both an advantage (deep product knowledge, network) and a strategic liability (iyzico knows exactly what Craftgate is building and why). The differentiation Craftgate must sustain is its orchestration-layer neutrality — the ability to route across multiple PSPs including iyzico — versus iyzico's single-provider model, but a well-resourced incumbent can replicate orchestration features faster than a seed-stage startup can build brand and merchant volume.

What does Craftgate's Shopify module integration signal about its geographic and merchant-segment targeting strategy?

Adding a Shopify e-commerce module places Craftgate directly in front of the global base of Shopify merchants operating in or expanding into Turkey, signaling an intent to capture internationally-oriented SMEs rather than only large domestic enterprises. Shopify's merchant ecosystem skews toward growth-stage e-commerce businesses, which are precisely the segment most likely to need payment orchestration as they add new PSPs and cross-border payment methods. This move also positions Craftgate to follow Turkish merchants expanding regionally, potentially laying the groundwork for a broader Middle East and Eastern Europe go-to-market.

What does the presence of Hepsiburada.com as a seed investor signal about Craftgate's enterprise pipeline and potential distribution advantages?

Hepsiburada is one of Turkey's largest e-commerce platforms, and its investment in Craftgate at the seed stage is a strong strategic signal rather than a pure financial bet. The relationship likely gives Craftgate a reference customer and a proof-of-scale deployment that most early-stage payment orchestration companies lack. It also suggests Hepsiburada sees Craftgate's infrastructure as complementary to its own payments operations — potentially indicating a commercial relationship or future embedded payments arrangement, though no formal partnership has been publicly disclosed.

What does Craftgate's emphasis on 3D Secure education and payment-flow content suggest about the maturity of its target customer base?

Craftgate has produced educational content specifically explaining 3D Secure payment flows, which are mandatory in Turkey and regulated across Europe under PSD2. Targeting merchants who still need to be educated on 3DS suggests Craftgate is partly serving mid-market and SME customers who have not yet built in-house payment expertise — a segment that values hand-holding and reduces churn risk through stickiness once integrated. It also signals a consultative sales motion where technical enablement is part of the value proposition, differentiating Craftgate from pure infrastructure plays that assume sophisticated buyers.

With no M&A activity and only seed-stage funding, what does Craftgate's five-year independence say about its likely exit or next-round trajectory?

Five years post-founding with no reported M&A activity, no Series A, and seed investors that include a strategic (Hepsiburada) rather than a pure VC fund, Craftgate presents an ambiguous exit profile. The strategic investor relationship with Hepsiburada raises the possibility of an eventual acqui-hire or acquisition by the parent or an affiliated entity, particularly if Craftgate's orchestration layer becomes deeply embedded in Hepsiburada's payments stack. Absent a new funding announcement, the company appears to be operating sustainably on transaction-fee revenue — which, if true, would make it an attractive acquisition target for a regional bank, telco, or international PSP seeking a ready-built Turkish orchestration layer with an experienced founding team.

What does the gap between Craftgate's small team size and its claim of handling nearly 100 daily customer support inquiries signal about product complexity and merchant experience?

A volume of ~100 daily support inquiries for a company with fewer than 60 employees is a notable load, implying either high onboarding complexity, frequent integration questions, or active troubleshooting needs from a growing merchant base. Craftgate's reported decision to deploy Hiver — saving 130+ hours per month — suggests the support burden was reaching a breaking point before that intervention. For a competitive intelligence analyst, this signals that Craftgate's product, while technically capable, may have UX or documentation gaps that create friction at scale, a potential vulnerability if a better-resourced competitor like Adyen or PayU pushes into the Turkish mid-market with more polished developer experience.

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