Shepard Exposition Services runs more than 300 events a year and has over 100 associates processing payments. As part of its Salesforce rollout, Shepard chose Unaric Payments to connect its long-standing Stripe account to Salesforce. The result is a native, secure payment process managed in Salesforce with no custom build, and a foundation for Level 2 and Level 3 data and adaptive pricing.
About Shepard Exposition Services
Shepard Exposition Services is an events and trade show business that serves more than 300 events every year. Its exhibitors and customers span the globe, and every event is different.
"Each event is extremely unique. We pride ourselves at Shepard in customer experience and customer support, and we try to find partners and vendors that can help us support that mission," says Sarah Aivaz, SVP, Business Solutions at Shepard.
The challenge: high-stakes payments at event speed
Event payments are not like a steady monthly subscription. Shepard manages sharp peaks around each show, followed by quieter periods. They also handle B2B exhibitor orders in multiple currencies, across different payment rails and methods.
Timing makes every payment matter. "Events are time sensitive by design," explains Nick Chaffe, founder of Unaric Payments. "So missing a payment or having failed payments is disruptive and a hit on cash flow."
Shepard already had a long-standing relationship with Stripe. When it began rolling out Salesforce, it needed a way to bring that Stripe processing into its core CRM without building and maintaining a custom integration.
"At Shepard, in our rollout of Salesforce, we realised we needed the support of an application like Unaric in the middle between us and Stripe," says Sarah.
Scale and security were also front of mind. "We have over 100 associates processing payments within our environment and organisation," she says. "With that size, you really want to make sure that you have an application that can help make that customer experience streamlined as well as secure."
We were kind of guessing at the payment collection process, big or small. You never want to stop payments. You always want to make sure that you can process that in a timely fashion.
The solution: Stripe payments managed natively in Salesforce
Shepard implemented Unaric Payments, which connects payment service providers such as Stripe to Salesforce with clicks, not code. Stripe handles money movement. Unaric makes it native to Salesforce and embeds payments into Shepard's business journeys.
Stripe brings the payments and money movement expertise and Unaric brings a very, very deep expertise in Salesforce. The main customer outcome is that there is no custom build, no integration risk, and customers can get live much faster.
For Nick, the key is the foundation it creates. "We are stopping them from needing to build and maintain payment integrations into Salesforce," he says. That means new functionality can be added without Shepard having to spend more, rebuild or retest.
The results: time and confidence back for finance teams
With payments running natively in Salesforce, Shepard's finance and operations teams no longer worry about whether the Stripe integration works or whether the next upgrade will break it.
"They need to be focused on the next event they're running, and their exhibitor relationships," says Nick. "So we're giving them more time back. We're giving them more confidence that things are running the way they need them to run."
We have two great partners in Unaric and Stripe. Unaric and Stripe together have been just seamless for us.
Key outcomes for Shepard include:
What's next? Level 2 and Level 3 data, adaptive pricing and AI agents
Shepard is now adding Level 2 and Level 3 data processing through Unaric and Stripe. This passes additional data with every transaction, which can lower processing costs and improve payment success rates.
"Not only does it help us from a financial standpoint and benefit us on some savings in our transaction fees," says Sarah, "but it also helps us capture better data and with better data analysis, so we can provide better solutions."
What's on the horizon for Shepard's payments process? Next, Shepard is looking to implement adaptive currency, where pricing is shown in each exhibitor's local currency at checkout. Longer term, structured payment data in Salesforce will provide the foundations for AI automation and agentic workflows that can handle routine payment tasks and fix problems automatically.
