City Hive, the all-in-one commerce and marketing platform for the three-tier alcohol industry, has announced a major milestone: over $1 billion in annual B2B payments processed through its platform, just 526 days after launching its payment system. The achievement highlights a fundamental shift in how wholesalers, distributors, and retailers transact, reconcile, and report payments in a highly regulated market.

Unlike traditional payment solutions, City Hive’s system is embedded directly within its platform, giving administrators granular data access where every dollar is tied to a license, invoice, and compliance record — automatically reconciled in real time.

“Surpassing $1 billion in annual B2B payments isn’t just a number,” said Roi Kliper, CEO of City Hive. “It validates that the wholesale alcohol industry was ready for infrastructure built to work with its regulatory framework, not around it. Payments should always have been embedded, compliant, and tied to every license and invoice.”

Built for the U.S. Three-Tier System

City Hive’s platform serves as a comprehensive wholesale solution designed specifically for the U.S. three-tier alcohol system, operating seamlessly across traditional wholesale networks and the 17 control states. The system prioritizes data integrity, brand sovereignty, and compliance, offering flexibility to function either as an integrated connection to an existing ERP or as a full ERP itself.

Looking ahead to 2026, the platform will introduce a local AI chat feature for distributors, enabling instant operational support for stores. This initiative is part of City Hive’s broader Data Driven Commerce strategy, leveraging over 12 billion tracked transactions across suppliers, wholesalers, and retailers.

Unlike marketplace-style platforms that aggregate multiple retailers under a shared storefront, City Hive is a true white-label solution: every storefront, transaction, and data record remains tied to the licensed operator, preserving brand identity.

$1 Billion in Smart Volume

The milestone reflects transactions across 54,000+ active merchants in 44 states, with each payment carrying structured data on product, license, invoice, and counterparty. For wholesale administrators and compliance officers, this embedded architecture reduces overhead, minimizes reconciliation exceptions, and creates a defensible, auditable record at the SKU and license level — something external batch ACH processing cannot match.

“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.”

City Hive plans to showcase its platform at the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association (NABCA) Annual Conference in May 2026, demonstrating how embedded payments, ERP integrations, and full compliance visibility are helping operators modernize digital infrastructure without sacrificing brand control or regulatory compliance.

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