DriveCentric and Dealer Pay Announce Strategic Partnership to Enable Payments Within the CRM

Partnership signals platform direction, extending customer engagement through the point of payment

ST. LOUIS, Mo., Jan. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — DriveCentric, the modern CRM and engagement platform built for dealerships, today announced a strategic partnership with Dealer Pay, a dealership-specific payments platform built for automotive dealers, to enable compliant payment collection within DriveCentric.

The partnership is designed to bring payment capability into the natural flow of customer engagement inside the CRM, allowing dealerships to complete the workflow from conversation to revenue without introducing disconnected systems or manual handoffs. Importantly, DriveCentric is not entering the payments business; Dealer Pay provides the compliant payments platform powering the capability.

“As the premier customer-centric engagement platform, we believe CRMs should orchestrate the entire customer journey across every touchpoint and every department within the dealership,” said Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentric. “By embedding payments directly into DriveCentric on both mobile and desktop, we’re extending the CRM engagement lifecycle through the point of revenue collection— staying true to our core mission of driving better engagement.”

For dealerships, payment collection is no longer just a back-office function. It impacts customer experience, operational efficiency, compliance, and brand trust. By partnering with Dealer Pay, DriveCentric ensures payments are handled by a platform purpose-built for dealership operations, regulations, and accounting realities.

“This partnership exists because engagement alone isn’t enough anymore,” said Julie Douglas, Founder and CEO of Dealer Pay. “Dealers expect systems to deliver outcomes. By partnering with DriveCentric, we bring payments expertise, compliance, and dealership controls into the CRM experience — completing the lifecycle so engagement doesn’t stop short of revenue.”

The announcement underscores DriveCentric’s platform strategy to extend customer engagement throughout the vehicle ownership lifecycle. By expanding our partner ecosystem, we enable seamless, bi-directional integrations that allow DriveCentric to stay focused on engagement while partners deliver their core strengths. The partnership is expected to be available in Q1 2026.

DriveCentric and Dealer Pay will discuss the partnership and its implications for dealership operations during a special keynote-style session at the DriveCentric booth at NADA 2026.

About DriveCentric

DriveCentric is a modern automotive CRM and engagement platform that helps dealerships sell more cars by replacing rigid workflows with real-time customer engagement, faster decisions, and full visibility across the dealership. For more information, visit www.drivecentric.com.

About Dealer Pay

Dealer Pay, driven by Vehlo, is the only connected payments platform built specifically for automotive dealerships. Dealer Pay unifies how money moves in and out of the dealership—across sales, service, parts, accounting, and payables—eliminating disconnected systems and the inefficiencies they create.

Purpose-built for automotive, Dealer Pay automates payments, reduces errors, keeps dealerships compliant, removes hidden fees, and accelerates every transaction—so dealers make more money without adding more work. The result is a smoother customer experience, simpler workflows for teams, and stronger profitability across every department.  For more information visit www.dealer-pay.com/drivecentric.

Media Contact:

Audrey Fusz
DriveCentric, LLC
afusz@drivecentric.com
12900 Maurer Industrial Dr.
St. Louis, MO 63127

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/drivecentric-and-dealer-pay-announce-strategic-partnership-to-enable-payments-within-the-crm-302664067.html

SOURCE DriveCentric