When David McMackin, President and Chief Executive Officer of payment solutions provider AmericaOne Merchant Services Inc., realized ISOs across the United States are struggling to access funding to continue their operations during the recession, he saw a niche that no other ISO occupied.
So McMackin, who is a 15-year payment veteran, teamed with other leading merchant services executives to found International Payments Corp. in August 2009. IPC is backed by more than $150 million in private funding. It acquires other ISOs and partners with them to provide comprehensive payment solutions to merchants throughout the United States and Canada.
"While some merchant services acquirers are sitting on the sidelines in today's uncertain economy, IPC has a planned series of acquisitions well underway," McMackin said. "When my brother and I opened AmericaOne in 2003, our model was providing buyout capital to ISOs. So the impetus for IPC was to have the kind of funding that puts us on a different playing field for companies that target the small to mid-sized ISOs" for acquisition.
IPC is also designed to deliver secure, scalable and reliable payment solutions to large corporations, government agencies and all financial institutions involved with payment processing. According to McMackin, IPC provides unique expansion opportunities for ISOs in need of funding, as well as technical and operational support. In addition to purchasing portfolios from targeted acquisitions, IPC will provide capital and share proprietary platforms with select payments industry partners to help increase account sales and merchant retention.
"The credit markets have obviously been stressed, so I think a lot of the money that would normally be flowing to some of these ISOs hasn't been available," McMackin said. "Consequently, there is an abundance of payment professionals who would like to get their hands on some cash at certain levels, and I believe IPC can enable them to take their operations to the next level."
IPC also has 15 regional sales teams in the United States and provides payment solutions, including credit, debit, check and gift card offerings, to both brick-and-mortar and virtual enterprises. The company's direct sales force uses e-learning and in-house recruiting to decrease expenses while accelerating growth.
"Our recruiting technologies are unique and can really help any financial services organization to streamline their training and recruiting costs," McMackin said. "Our sales team spends less than 20 percent of their time on training and recruiting, which provides a lot more time for selling for our teams and the ISOs that we acquire.
"And if a company can do that for another organization's sales team - training them and finding new merchant level salespeople [MLSs] - that ISO's sales team would then have significantly more time to sell to their merchants, which I think is unique at this time in the industry. And I believe with the right technologies and economies of scale, an ISO can build an army of competent and efficient MLSs."
IPC works with several third-party processors to provide high-quality, cost-effective payment solutions to the ISOs it acquires. And McMackin is confident these partnerships enable IPC to offer the most comprehensive suite of payment services. "With less acquiring dollars in the marketplace today, I believe it provides IPC with unique financial opportunities," McMackin said. "And if you couple that with the well-rounded and seasoned veterans on our management team, you have the winning combination.
"And I believe we can enable our ISO partners because we bring the market savvy needed to succeed - and IPC is well-positioned with the financial wherewithal to help sustain and grow an ISO's business while streamlining all the facets of their business."
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