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CompanyProfile

Accelerating integrated

payments

s the payments industry has evolved in the ISO/MLS contact:
last few decades, many of its influencers have
followed. Some have ventured beyond the Brett M. Fisher
A industry; others continue to focus on meeting
the demands of the dynamic, evolving payments sphere. Vice President Business
Payments pioneer Brian Shanahan is among the latter. Development
With nearly 30 years dedicated to the payments industry,
Shanahan is known for founding private payment firms 412-551-2910 – cell
and transforming them into publicly traded, enterprise 412-430-4174 – office
entities.
bfisher@pineapplepayments.com
Pittsburgh-based Pineapple Payments is Shanahan's fifth
payments business. He founded it in 2016, along with en- Onward and outward
trepreneur and co-founder Jon Halpern. Shanahan serves
as CEO, Halpern as president. Shanahan believes the Pineapple targets relationships with independent soft-
company's strength lies in its relationships. "Pineapple's ware vendors (ISVs) and other industry resellers by of-
ability to differentiate ourselves relies on our ability to fering its proprietary, omnichannel platform to help part-
help partners compete in the marketplace," he said. "We ners monetize solutions in a scalable environment. "We
do that by giving them comprehensive payment solutions talk about omnichannel payments because that's what
that improve their proposition." merchants and partners need to be successful," Halpern

Building core strength said. "They need tools that eliminate inefficiencies and
span all areas of operations, and Pineapple's out-of-the-
Pineapple Payments has nearly 50 employees, a payments box payment solutions and APIs make it faster and easier
platform, and a robust suite of value-added tools at its for merchants and partners to scale their business."
core. The firm describes itself as a "payments technology
company that provides payment processing, proprietary Pineapple's platform features ready-to-go solutions and
technology, and omnichannel payment acceptance solu- also supports custom integrations. The packaged solu-
tions for merchants of all shapes and sizes." Focused pri- tions, such as Pineapple's desktop and online QuickBooks
marily on outfitting resellers with application program- APIs, are tailored to provide merchants with maximum
ming interface (API)-based solutions, Pineapple supports business flexibility. "Our proprietary QuickBooks inte-
everything from hosted payment pages and recurring grated app is a prime example of streamlining workflow
billing to online invoice management and integrated ap- and reducing duplicate data entry," Halpern noted. "Mer-
plications for QuickBooks. chants get seamless access to process new QuickBooks
payments and sync functionality to reconcile payments
Since the company's inception, its leadership team has back." Halpern indicated the partner benefits as well. "It's
strategically utilized investment capital for acquisitions not just merchants who benefit either," he said. "By lever-
and to drive organic sales distribution. "We've had eight aging our integration, ISVs can automatically sync pay-
acquisitions in the last three years," Shanahan said, de- ments from their software back to QuickBooks without
scribing them as "a combination of both portfolio and writing one single line of QuickBooks-related code."
company acquisitions." The purchase of Chicago-based More technology to come
Transax in 2018 enhanced Pineapple's complement of pro-
prietary solutions with payment gateway and omnichan- According to Pineapple's leadership, the plan is to con-
nel capabilities. According to one company representa- tinue building the technology team and developing new
tive, it was a pivotal acquisition that enabled Pineapple technologies to increase distribution channels and meet
to position more prominently as both a payments and the unique and varied needs of partners. "ISVs can in-
technology company. tegrate to Pineapple's APIs to build their own offering,"
Shanahan said. "ISOs can white label our solutions to
"This really takes Pineapple Payments' technology build their own brand, and strategic partners can lever-
to a very different level," Halpern stated shortly af- age Pineapple as a financial asset, receiving upfront and
ter the deal was announced. "These guys at Transax long-term investments to bolster growth and rollout. Our
have created a fully integrated payment gateway, as vision, to make commerce easy and accessible in a variety
well as a payments platform, and they've developed a of different markets, is made possible through our power-
number of value-added features." ful relationships and partner networks."

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