SWIPEBY relies on Avalara to accelerate growth

The SWIPEBY software-as-a-service platform enables any brick-and-mortar food service business to compete with corporate drive-thrus by providing a low-touch, curbside experience. Its turnkey solution offers easy online ordering, delivery, pickup, remarketing, and customizable arrival notifications and messaging based on location.

“Our customers are small and medium-sized businesses,” says Travis Benoit, director of operations and corporate development at SWIPEBY. “It doesn’t make sense for them to develop their own app, so we also function as a marketplace to provide extra value. In sales tax language, that puts us into the marketplace facilitator bucket.”

Marketplace facilitator laws impose an obligation on companies like SWIPEBY to collect and remit sales tax on behalf of marketplace sellers. These laws are significant because they shift the obligation to collect and remit sales tax from the seller to the platform that facilitates the sale.

“Before the marketplace facilitator laws were rolled out, we weren’t managing sales tax,” Travis continues. “When it was required, our customers handled it themselves — setting the tax rate, collecting, and remitting on their own. Operating in multiple states across different verticals adds layers of complexity to what is already a large tax compliance challenge for our business.”

SWIPEBY needed a solution that would calculate sales tax at the local level in municipalities all over the U.S. and that could also handle special taxes such as hospitality. “With Avalara, we found a solution that can handle all of our tax compliance needs end to end,” says Travis.

The SWIPEBY team expects to expand across the contiguous U.S. As the company grows, large enterprises are starting to show interest in the SWIPEBY platform, which will increase the complexity of managing sales tax compliance.