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vertical opportunities
processor Store Financial spotlight
Shaking up B2B Payments
With a new CEO and a re- newed focus on shaking up corporate payments, Over- land Park, Kan.-based Store Finan- cial is helping accounts payable (AP) departments move payments from a cost center to a revenue generator.
“Traditional AP payment programs are highly inefficient,” says CEO Eric Mettemeyer, who joined the company in May of 2014, follow- ing a capital infusion from local investors. “They involve manual processes, paper, postage and bank fees, and they lack the ability to take advantage of early pay discounts. We by no means in- vented the virtual supplier pay- ment card, but we’re sure as hell innovating around it.”
A trained accountant, Mettemeyer is passionate about getting rid of old-school processes that are re- petitive, manual and low-value-add. That passion—and a strong value proposition—is key to moving the needle with large organizations that aren’t necessarily known for their quick embrace of leading-edge technology, he says.
With no IT, AP or enterprise resource planning systems integration re- quired, Store Financial’s private- label virtual card platform enables v-card issuance for the exact pay- ment amount, eliminating the risk of lost or stolen checks or misdirected ACH payments. The company also handles acquiring and v-card sup- plier enrollment and ongoing com- munications to optimize v-card
What drew me to the space is the ability to leverage the card payment networks to improve payment processes.
—Eric Mettemeyer
acceptance. But perhaps, more im- portant to prospects, Store Financial offers what it calls the highest v-card rebates in the industry. These revenue-sharing rebates are paid out monthly instead of yearly as with traditional purchasing cards.
The company, which built its busi- ness on Custom Loop gift card programs that ride the network rails, has branched out to a variety of verticals. Clients include everyone from Harley-Davidson and Shell Oil to the City of Boulder, Colo. Part
of Store Financial’s appeal is its breadth of services across verticals
—gift, accounts payable, disburse- ment, incentives and promotions— including processing, program management, acquiring, marketing and customer service.
“Where there are large flows of supplier payments, our platform adds value,” Mettemeyer says. “And the flows are massive ...
not billions of dollars, but trillions. That has us pretty darn excited.
DiD You Know?
Store Financial is processing more than $2 billion annually in supplier payments on behalf of health insurance companies.
“What drew me to the space is the ability to leverage the card pay- ment networks to improve payment processes,” Mettemeyer continues. “But we don’t think in terms of
just prepaid. We think in terms
of payment processing. In some cases, an arrangement involves pre-funding; in other cases it in- volves credit. Differences in funding require different economic models, but they don’t need to be core considerations to driving process improvements. A gift card is not value-added because it’s prepaid, it’s value-added because it vastly improves the payment process
of paper gift certificates. We’re focused on improving payment processing regardless of the ebb and flow of prepaid or credit, plastic or virtual, NFC or MST.”