About

Built by operators. Not advisors.

Arrowhead Advisory Group is a venture studio and holding company that builds, deploys, and operates payments infrastructure companies. We also work with legacy stack owners to modernize using our proprietary IP.

Our Story

Why Arrowhead exists

The payments industry runs on infrastructure that was built decades ago. ISOs still manage residuals in spreadsheets. Processors still route transactions through single-path systems. Compliance is manual. Underwriting is slow. The technology exists to fix all of it, but the companies with the expertise to build it have never had the operator DNA to deploy it where it matters.

Arrowhead was built to close that gap. We are not a consulting firm that hands over slide decks. We are not a venture fund that writes checks and waits. We build the companies ourselves, deploy them into the market, and operate them with the same intensity we brought to building the largest payments programs in North America. Every dollar in the portfolio is working. Every product we ship is built on proprietary infrastructure. Every company we create feeds the next.

We are a venture studio and holding company in one. We build, deploy, and win.

Leadership

The operators behind the build.

Allan Lacoste

Allan Lacoste

Founder and CEO

25+ years building payment infrastructure from the inside. Former Chief Payments Officer with ground-up PayFac implementations across Adyen, Worldpay, Stripe, and traditional BIN/ICA sponsorship models. Serial entrepreneur with multiple exits. Career spent inside the engine room of the largest payments programs in North America, including work embedded within portfolio companies of major private equity firms. Full P&L ownership across payments and SaaS businesses. He operates, advises, and builds. Often all at once.

DL

Dylan Lacoste

Co-Founder and Chief AI Officer

Architect of the proprietary agentic workforce powering the entire Arrowhead portfolio. Leads all AI development, systems architecture, and patent strategy. Responsible for the design, training, and deployment of 40+ specialized AI agents operating in production across fraud detection, payment routing, compliance automation, and underwriting intelligence. Hands-on technical leadership from architecture through production deployment. The keyboard-level builder behind the IP that protects everything Arrowhead owns. 20+ patents pending under his technical direction.

Proprietary Technology

The agentic workforce.

Not a feature. Not a roadmap. A fully deployed, proprietary AI infrastructure that powers every company in the Arrowhead portfolio.

40+
AI Agents Deployed
20+
Patents Pending
12ms
Avg Decision Latency
0%
Off-the-Shelf AI
Routing Intelligence

Transaction Optimization

Real-time multi-processor routing based on cost, approval probability, and processor health. Every transaction finds its optimal path. Interchange savings of 18-35% across the merchant base.

Risk and Compliance

Automated Protection

Behavioral fraud detection, chargeback prediction, and continuous compliance monitoring operating in parallel. 0.03% false positive rate. SOC 2, PCI DSS Level 1, and HIPAA-ready infrastructure.

Underwriting

Intelligent Onboarding

AI-powered merchant underwriting that evaluates risk, categorizes verticals, and makes approval decisions in hours instead of weeks. 200+ verticals supported.

Learn about our IP moat
Intellectual Property

20+ patents pending across the portfolio.

Payment Routing Intelligence

Multi-processor routing algorithms that optimize for cost, approval rate, and processor health in real time. Core to the Penumbra platform.

Residual Attribution

Automated residual calculation, attribution, and distribution across complex agent hierarchies. Powers the economics of 0030 and Echelon.

Behavioral Fraud Detection

Pattern recognition across transaction sequences that identifies fraud before it completes. Operates at 12ms latency with a 0.03% false positive rate.

Training-to-Deployment Pipeline

Integrated credentialing, licensing, and field deployment system. Connects professional education to active revenue generation. Core to Echelon Institute.

All patents filed as micro entity. Assignee: Arrowhead Advisory Group LLC and its portfolio companies.

We are building across the portfolio.

We hire for people, not job descriptions. If you are an operator, builder, or seller who wants to work at the intersection of payments, AI, and field operations, we want to hear from you.

Get in touch