The good people at ECHO (Electronic Clearing House, Inc.) make no bones about the fact that there are some in the ISO/payment industry who may never have heard of them. After all, explained a nicely worded letter from company CEO Joel M. Barry that accompanied their annual report, "We have intentionally remained quiet in the past few years as we have built our business."
Judging from the content of the report, however, ECHO 's low profile may soon be a thing of the past. With a vision for taking the electronic commerce industry by storm via Internet transactions, and with a focus on merchant-oriented financial service solutions, ECHO, a publicly traded credit card processor, is clearly a company with a mission. And with a 252% increase in revenue in fiscal -98 to talk about, they also appear to be on a path to profits.
What is the secret of ECHO's success? "To be a viable, long-term company, you've got to provide merchants with a combination of products," Barry said. As an example, ECHO's impressive hardware department has designed a successful credit card processing and inventory tracking system used by one of their biggest clients, U-Haul International, which services over 11,500 U-Haul dealers nationwide. In 1995, ECHO won the contract with the United States Postal Service to be in charge of their electronic money order device (EMOD) program. In March of this year, ECHO announced a deal to acquire Magic Software Development, which will give them a foothold into the check processing business. Magic is a software company that deals with electronic check conversion, electronic check re-presentment, payday loans, check verification, check guarantee and other solutions tailored to the merchants needs. "Merchants are asking for a complete solution that includes electronic check conversion-presentment, along with credit card processing," said Barry.
Another aspect of ECHO's success has been through focus in building transactions by the Internet, making them user friendly, cost effective, and easily managed. ECHO is one of the few processors who accept transactions over the Internet, including allowing merchants to review transactions, respond to retrievals, research chargebacks, and identify frequent customers. "Banks are fearful of the Internet," Barry said. "What we have done is to create real-time authorizations for both credit cards and checks." ECHO predicts that 60% of all Web sites will be commerce-enabled by the year 2000.
ECHO can be reached at (818) 706-8999, or by accessing their Web site at www.echo-inc.com.
