Early Warning's Paze sponsors New York City soccer club

• Key insights: Paze, Early Warning Service's digital wallet and online checkout tool, signed a multi-year partnership with New York City FC to be the official online checkout and digital wallet for the Major League Soccer franchise and a founding partner of its forthcoming stadium, Etihad Park.  
• What's at stake: Paze has been focused this year on becoming a household name, similar to Zelle. 
• Forward look: The $780 billion stadium is expected to open in the first half of 2027. 

Digital wallet and online checkout platform Paze is doubling down on its sports strategy with Major League Soccer franchise New York City FC in the hopes it can capitalize on soccer's rising popularity in the U.S. to bring more awareness to its brand. 

"When we look for partners, specifically brands that we want to associate ourselves with to uplift the Paze brand… we first look at the value that the organization brings, and does that align with our values at Paze," Serge Elkiner, Paze's general manager, told American Banker. 

The Early Warning Service subsidiary signed a multi-year partnership with NYC FC to be the franchise's official digital wallet and online checkout provider and a founding franchise partner of the club's forthcoming stadium, Etihad Park, beginning in 2026. 

"We want to be a trusted brand," he said. "[NYC FC] is a very serious, trusted, premier sports brand… and the way they approached the new stadium, the way that they look to the community, the way that they look for small and medium businesses to like to be part of and weaved in, it's what we wanted."

Early Warning Services/Paze

Paze will also be showcased on club channels and throughout the venue, which is expected to open in the first half of 2027. It has the naming rights to City Square, a 40,000 square foot space in the stadium that opens to the outside year round and houses local food and beverage businesses from the five boroughs in New York. 

NYC FC is in the process of building a new $780 million, fully electric stadium that has a seating capacity of 25,000 people and is part of a 23-acre neighborhood development at Willets Point, Queens, in the same area where Citi Field, the New York Mets baseball stadium, and the U.S. Tennis Association's Billie Jean King National Tennis Center are located. 

The project includes 2,500 new affordable housing units, a 650-seat public school, a new hotel and more than 150,000 square feet of public space. The 23-acre section that Etihad Park will occupy is part of a larger, 61-acre community development plan by the city. 

"We are biased, but we believe we're building what we're calling the Cathedral of Soccer," NYC FC CEO Brad Sims told American Banker. "It's going to be the soccer stadium for New York and the U.S."

Etihad Park will also host international clubs when they travel to play in the U.S. and women's soccer. 

"The FIFA Women's World Cup is coming in 2031 to the United States," Sims said. "We feel strongly that we would be a fantastic venue for that, and we're confident that we will be hopefully selected as a venue for that." 

The deal with NYC FC is Paze's second with a sports franchise. In October, Paze became the official jersey patch partner of the National Basketball League's Atlanta Hawks and the official online checkout partner and digital wallet of both the team and its home facility, the State Farm Arena.

Paze's leaders have been on a quest to make it a household name in the same way that Zelle has become commonplace for peer-to-peer payments, and sports franchises have emerged as a key pillar of that effort. 

"After a relatively quiet rollout in 2024, Paze is looking to overcome its slow start and grow consumer adoption of the wallet, which starts by expanding consumer awareness," Grace Broadbent, a senior analyst with Emarketer, told American Banker. "Building on its partnership with the NBA's Atlanta Hawks, this partnership with New York City FC will help it do just that."

Sports stadiums draw a large and captive audience, which helps companies grow brand awareness. "Partnering with both an NBA and MLS team — especially ones in different cities — ensures Paze is being exposed to a wider segment of consumers. Both the NBA and MLS bring different types of fans, allowing Paze to layer brand recognition across different demographics." 

The deal also helps Paze become a utility essential to the fan experience within the local community, Tyler Reed, founder and CEO of Bizwrite Digital PR, told American Banker. 

"This new MLS deal with New York City FC is with a brand-new, state-of-the-art stadium, the very characteristics Paze is looking to attribute to their own brand," Reed said. "While they'll have significant visibility in the park, that move is far more indicative of a long-term relevance play over immediate eyeballs." 

The strategy is called segmented omnipresence. "It makes sense for a mass-market fintech like Paze to be launching," Reed said. "The MLS audience is younger, more diverse, and more tech-forward than the NBA. With visibility in both the NBA and MLS, they have higher-net-worth consumers in the NBA and the higher-growth tech-native segment in MLS." 

MLS fans tend to be "intensely loyal" and more community focused, while the NBA leans more toward a global fanbase, Reed said. 

Soccer and the MLS is also seeing an increase in popularity, thanks to the 2026 World Cup that will be hosted in the U.S., Mexico and Canada. According to Harris Poll, 75% of Americans said they were interested in soccer, a 17% increase since 2020. And almost half, 45%, of Americans said their interest in soccer was increasing. 

Soccer is one of the fastest growing sports in the country and one of the most popular sports globally, Elkiner said. "These stories of the communities and the impact the sport has in the community, plus the story of having people come together to watch those games, to me, that resonated with what we needed to do, which means bring the Paze brand to life and have that awareness of Paze."