hen The Green Sheet initiated its popular "Company Profile" feature, one of the first organizations highlighted was APRIVA, a leading wireless application service provider or "WASP" (issue 1:06:02, June 25, 2001). Armed with small yet powerful wireless devices, APRIVA was focused on providing business customers with complete wireless solutions, including application software, wireless network access, wireless communication devices and peripheral hardware.

Has APRIVA been discovered in the payment-processing marketplace? According to President/CEO Kevin Hickey, it certainly has. In the last year, APRIVA introduced its intelligent gateway to support existing devices, including the RIM product line. APRIVA also partnered with Lipman and through that alliance developed a strong marketing relationship with all Lipman devices.

"What we are driving home is activating the [NURIT] 8000 product line with our technology," says Hickey. "NURIT or APRIVA, we don't care. Lipman's NuritGate powered by APRIVA or APRIVA gateway powered by NURIT. It's lit up their terminals, and it's been a great relationship."

According to Hickey, APRIVA's new platform lends itself to any device. "Give us two to three weeks, and you can use it with any network out there," says Hickey. "Our service enables terminals to securely capture and deliver data. Even reporting is secure. Each transaction is safe."

It appears that APRIVA's gateway is being well received. It already has been Class A certified with Paymentech and is in the process of being certified Class A with First Data of Nashville, Tenn., as well. "It's pretty significant to have your intelligent gateway certified," says Hickey. "It's been very strategic to our growth."

That growth has been reflected in steady quarter-of-quarter increases, thanks to the gateway as well as other applications that are utilized. Another reason for the profitable bottom line: APRIVA's new leadership under Hickey.

Hickey took over in September 2001. Before joining the APRIVA team, he was CEO/Chairman of Homebid.com and also lists Viasoft and IBM on his resume.

Before being renamed APRIVA - derived from the Italian word for "opened" - in 2000, the company was called NetFrontier Communications. It was founded in 1996 by a group of bright entrepreneurs, including Chairman Chris Spinella, who still remains on the board but has stepped down from the top spot.

"Chris builds technology but doesn't really run companies," says Hickey. "His take was to bring in someone who had experience in building and running a successful company."

Enter Hickey.

Management also welcomed new team members with sales, marketing and product-development expertise, including Jim Dooley, the new Vice President of Sales, and several more experienced solutions techies. The result: significant revenue growth for APRIVA and an increased customer base from its three original customers to more than 200 entities using its applications and intelligent gateway services. APRIVA also has signed 22 active ISOs and expanded its target market.

"We're not just relying on the point-of-sale space," says Hickey. "We've branched out into other verticals such as freight transportation with UPS/FedEx-like functionality as well as customer-acquisition apps."

Customer-acquisition applications are popular at major venues such as airports, major sports events, college campuses and malls. Companies are using these venues to sign up or acquire new customers for products or services such as credit cards, ISP services, telecom services and newspaper subscriptions.

Potential customers walk up to a table showcasing free giveaways with a credit card application. But, according to Hickey, while these services allow for people to sign up rapidly, 80% of the applications are filled out incorrectly, and it is inefficient to process them.

With APRIVA, "all the proper data is captured electronically," says Hickey. "Our app lets you qualify prospects on the spot and sign them up. For example, with a home phone number entered into the mobile device, a third-party database is instantly accessed for the prospect's contact information. Then the mobile worker can instantly access their company's subscription database to check whether the prospect is an existing customer. If not, a credit card is swiped for payment, a receipt is printed and the new subscription information is sent electronically back to the company.

"The time and cost to acquire new customers is dramatically reduced from more than $250 to less than $25. In fact, the largest credit card company in the world is now utilizing our wireless solution to acquire new credit card customers in the field."

There's always a flip side to the positive, and in the case of APRIVA, it's interesting to see what hasn't worked for the company in the last year.

"I don't know if it hasn't worked, but the frustration point is the fragmentation of the POS marketplace and other technologies that have not been successful," says Hickey. "A lot of people have tried different technology, and the result wasn't strong. That made it more difficult for us. Here we built this unbelievable, intelligent gateway, but it makes our sales cycle longer because we have had to prove ourselves.

"People are starting to understand what we have. When we introduced it, it was way too early and not ready for prime time. We had to first crawl, then walk, and now we are sprinting."

A big part of that sprinting is because of the increased focus by APRIVA on the lucrative ISO channel.

"Our sales force is seriously directed at ISOs," says Hickey. "We're successfully working off existing ISO relationships and continue to build more. But we don't just send out a contract. We look for medium- to large-size ISOs who don't mind doing their own billing, who have strong relationships and significant market presence."

Hickey continues, "We are looking for ISOs who want to expand. There are ISOs who have their own niche and don't want to do wireless. We want the ISOs who after seeing our product are red hot about it. Margins are being cut in the traditional POS side. We are the answer." Hickey makes a point of saying that APRIVA is not discontinuing any relationships it has traditionally built but recognizes that ISOs have to sell 20 to 40 more deals to make the same money. "With our product, they can become more value to their customers," says Hickey. "The more value they bring to the table, the more interested the merchants are."

Another ingredient to the success of an APRIVA-ISO relationship is knowledge and understanding. "We look for ISOs who take the time to understand gateways, not just for our product but for others as well," says Hickey. Hickey professes this philosophy because APRIVA's gateway can be effectively utilized across the retail board. "The beauty of our product is that there is a lot of upsale potential," says Hickey. "If the ISOs' customers utilize either Lipman or our product, they can do more than point-of-sale. They can add e-mail, a customer loyalty program, inventory tracking or dispatch capabilities and credit card processing on a single device and have card acquiring potential. They get more bang for their buck."

Hickey provides examples to back up his statements. "You can sell Mary Kay cosmetics and do an automatic inventory with bar code data. Our intelligent gateway is the foundation of our company, not our terminals. It's all about timely information off the gateway. Say a merchant wants to change a price or inventory. He can centrally manage the devices and applications by accessing our gateway through a secure Web site and within seconds change the terminals to reflect new prices or new tax rates - all because they are connected."

That connectivity can be accomplished fairly quickly. Once an ISO submits an app, it's just a matter of a couple of hours before the merchant is up and running. Hickey even boasts that some merchants can be connected within 15 minutes. And the cost for APRIVA's service is just as attractive.

"We're priced below a lot of the traditional terminals," says Hickey. "We are in a very competitive range. Remember, our gateway hooks up to any device and any network. I don't think any other gateway can make that claim, and I don't think there's any other gateway that has the security and scalability that ours does."

How does APRIVA support its gateway and various other products and services? The answer lies in its partnerships and alliances.

"We rely on ISOs for Tier 1 support to the merchants," says Hickey. "We provide education and training over the web and will do significant orders in person. We spend a lot of research and development dollars to make our products as complete and intuitive as possible. We have never gotten a customer complaint regarding our gateway. We receive one customer call per week from our largest credit card customer with over 500 devices. I dare anyone to call me on it."

That bold approach may very well be the reason why APRIVA is growing significantly in today's current market. That, and its clear business model. "Our model is a software company," says Hickey. "The only reason we got into hardware was to promote and insure one stop shopping with a gateway. We knew our RIM products were strong and reliable. People like it and are continuing to sell it. We had to prove out the gateway. I thought it was the absolute wrong move to be one stop shopping, but it was absolutely the right move."

Coming from a software background, Hickey thought APRIVA needed to supply apps because he didn't see the industry buying technology. "Everyone is buying bottom lines," says Hickey. "Stocks are going down and if your product doesn't show strong revenue and save at the expense line, no one is going to buy it. They want to see scalability and growth in product. We have both."

While scalability and growth may not be a challenge for APRIVA, focus is. "We support a number of different verticals," says Hickey. "We need to have people understand the POS and the freight-tracking and customer-acquisition businesses, so we need to have salespeople focused on those markets. We are like ISOs in that we are using channels. We must do a good job utilizing those channels. That's where we need to become more disciplined."

Hickey says the biggest problem of the payment-processing industry is that there are too many cooks in the kitchen. "Merchants want simplicity," he says. "Their attitude: Don't bring me three or four vendors, bring me one solution. And that's exactly what we're giving ISOs."

Hickey sees the future of the industry heading in that direction with processors playing a strong role, making it easier on ISOs. They, in turn, can put technology in one integrated solution for their merchants, thus offering more services and increasing their bottom line.

Where does that put APRIVA? "Our goal is to go after each and every processor and sell a license of our intelligent gateway," says Hickey. "We are out in other verticals because things do change, but the most profitable way for us to succeed in this industry is through processors. In turn, what will happen is the processors will support ISOs with our technology. ISOs are critical to our growth. I want to be able to make sure every ISO going through different agreements has our intelligent gateway."