by Ross Trumble Digital Revolution
If you’ve ever owned a business that takes payment by credit or debit card, you’ve had to get set up with a merchant services provider. It’s not usually the most enjoyable experience, but it’s the cost of doing business.
As a business owner, or “merchant” (in the eyes of the agent selling you an account), you may not realize what the sales person on the other end of the line is going through while determining the type of processing that best suits your needs. Quite frankly, the industry as a whole is still using very outdated modes of analyzing statements and crunching data. Usually the best you can hope for is that their company has at least provided them with an Excel spread sheet with equations for rate and fee structures built in.
Sometimes, even that is too much to ask. Many operations will have their sales people take down your info and send it to a back room where one person is crunching the numbers, then get back to you several days later with a quote. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but we all have come to expect instant analysis, especially with financial products and services.
Because of this glaring need in an extremely profitable sector, [payment]prophet was created to streamline the process and bring this industry into the 21st Century. Full disclosure: I have an ownership interest in this product, so clearly my bias is showing. However, I’d be impressed with the scope of what the application does as a casual observer.
I am constantly reminded of Calyx Point and what it means to the mortgage broker world. It’s been 17 years and they still don’t have any real competition. We don’t expect that kind of clearance, but it’s nice to dream.
Of course social and digital media is paramount in our marketing strategy and there is some exciting “earned media” coming, but I won’t give that up just yet.
I must give all the credit where it is due, to the visionary and merchant services industry veteran, Corey Grottola and our unbelievably talented and versatile programmer/designer Vann Gable Gutierrez. My consulting business will continue, so please don’t think I won’t have time to introduce small business to social media, but this is a project I am very excited about with potential for long term success.
Please take about 40 seconds to check out our commercial, which is meant to be played with the volume turned all the way up!
