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NewProduct

• Settlement accounting: Identify and resolve settle-
ment discrepancies with financial accounting best
practices.
• Reserve management: Manage reserve collection and
payouts in real time and provide detailed ledgers to
sponsor banks or other third parties.
• Split funding: Customize and fully automate split
Take command with • Merchant billing: Create a customized merchant bill-
funding for payments made to unlimited lenders.

centralized merchant ing system that is compliant with industry best prac-
tices.
• Statement generation: Save time and money by gener-
management Consolidated growth
ating monthly merchant statements.

ettlement Data Systems launched Pioneer, a Settlement Data Systems also provides an underwriting and
software-as-as-service (SaaS) solution designed boarding product, Payment Prospector, a complementary
to reinvigorate ISOs by supporting their unique product to the Pioneer merchant management platform.
S operational needs. The processor-agnostic plat- Combined capabilities of the two software products
form can help payment processors and ISOs improve enable ISOs to manage the entire merchant lifecycle, from
margins by giving them more control of their merchant underwriting to onboarding to residual revenue streams,
portfolios, according to Kevin Smith, CEO at Settlement within a single platform, the company noted.
Data Systems.
Elaina Smith, CFO at Settlement Data Systems, stated that
ISOs that resell the same products from big processors have Pioneer is designed to help ISOs overcome top challenges.
few ways to differentiate, Smith noted. "Competing on price The platform can reduce and eliminate common problems
alone is a race to the bottom and it's one of the main reasons such as shrinking profit margins, inaccurate financial data,
ISO margins have sharply declined in recent years," he said. merchant funding errors, unreliable and disconnected
"With Pioneer, ISOs have a way to compete by customizing software systems, cash flow delays, complicated residual
their services specifically for their business model. They calculations, over-billing from third party vendors and
can easily manage those services from the central platform merchant losses based on bad risk or incomplete data, she
of Pioneer, and even better, at a reduced cost." added
Smith also mentioned that Pioneer was developed several It's common practice for ISOs to handle risk on one platform,
years ago to support his wholesale ISO business, Secure merchant funding on another, and customer service on yet
Bancard. When he saw Pioneer's potential to help other another, Smith noted. "Pioneer brings it all into one place
ISOs, he quickly pivoted to turn it into an SaaS solution. so that ISOs have complete control over their merchant
"As soon as we implemented Pioneer for our own ISO, portfolios on one platform," she said. "If a merchant is held
we substantially increased our profit margin, reduced for risk in Pioneer or they have an ACH Return come in for
utilization of our existing staff by roughly 40 percent across 'account frozen,' there's no need to go to a separate system
various operational areas, and received overwhelmingly to stop them from getting funded that day."
positive feedback from our selling agents," Smith said. "We
knew we were onto something." ISOs processing on multiple platforms can see all of their
data in one place with Pioneer, Smith stated, adding that
ISO-savvy design Pioneer also enables sponsor banks with view of all of their
Created for ISOs by ISOs, Pioneer cuts merchant portfolio ISO business, which they can use for risk management
management costs, replacing costly outside services with purposes or to white-label the solution so that all of their
a user-friendly account management dashboard, the ISOs are running their business on the same platform.
company stated. The following features and benefits enable
participating ISOs to keep more of the money
they earn, according to Settlement Data: Company: Settlement Data Systems
• Risk management: Manage and mitigate Product: Pioneer
portfolio risk.
• Residual management: Enhance profit- Website: https://pioneer.settlementdatasystems.com
ability with detailed reporting on every Contact: jamie.garfield@settlementdatasystems.com
transaction.

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