Embracing a global evolution

In 1999, a handful of Bank of America Merchant Services executives broke away to form the merchant acquiring and global processing company Merchant e-Solutions Inc. (MeS). Their primary ambition was to capitalize on the burgeoning ecommerce market.

Nearly 20 years and a major buyout later, MeS reported it now processes over 20 billion in transaction volume annually and serves a diverse portfolio of ecommerce, brick-and-mortar and business-to-business (B2B) customers. Purchased by Latin American processor Cielo S.A. in 2012, MeS functions as a wholly owned subsidiary, representing Cielo's U.S. business.

Recognized for excellence

The MeS headquarters and engineering department are located in Atlanta, where approximately 120 of the company's 240 employees are based. Another branch is located in Spokane, Wash., and functions as the company's customer support and operations hub. This location employs a staff of 80. The company also employs a handful of remote workers.

MeS has been recognized two-years consecutively on the Business Journal's "Best Places to Work in the Inland Northwest" list. The company has also earned two Stevie Awards, and it recently placed as a top-tier finalist in the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Young Professionals One in a Millennial Awards.

"We take pride in our world-class work environments," said Trevor Rubel, MeS co-CEO and Executive Vice President of Product. "We strive to maintain highly attractive, contemporary work settings with innovative work spaces that promote fun, camaraderie and collaboration for our team."

A partnership powerhouse

Designed and built to be a full-stack processor, MeS prides itself on an extensive array of technical services. The company hosts end-to-end technologies that cover everything from its virtual terminal and gateway platform to its final authorization and settlement technologies.

Rubel referred to MeS as the original omnichannel service provider. "Features like tokenization, account updater, split-ordering and encryption have all been native to the MeS platform from the beginning, so by nature, we've always been an omnichannel-ready service provider," he said. "This is one of the unique MeS advantages, and it has enabled us to easily serve the emerging omnichannel market, as well as specialized B2B verticals that are incorporating an online focus."

MeS was quick to forge key business partnerships with several ecommerce thought leaders, and according to Rubel, the company's legacy partnership with NetSuite Inc. has carried MeS forward into many fruitful business relationships over the years. He said the company also created similar partnerships with key telecommunications, recurring billing and professional services companies.

The partnership mindset also moved MeS toward natural alliances with independent software vendors (ISVs) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, which Rubel said "far outweigh other parts of the market right now for payments." He described his company's approach as, "the payments business inside of SaaS solutions."

According to Rubel, the original MeS business model set the company up to naturally link with cloud-based software providers, because the founders knew to position themselves as a solution consulting group and serve partners by embedding a "payments business" into the software provider's payment model. "MeS has a great deal of skin in this game, so we're deeply invested in making these companies successful with their payments solutions," he said.

The new horizon

MeS noted that with over 200 partners, including technology application providers (cloud and on-premise solutions), ISVs, technology-driven ISOs and community banks, the company has achieved status as a top-10 merchant acquirer by The Nilson Report.

When asked about the future, Rubel indicated MeS is all about payments and moving money. "We have the ability to embed the technology and let the partner become the payment facilitator," he said. "We still do underwriting, but the partners offer the widgets, and this keeps our integrations clean, streamlined and attractive."

Notice to readers: These are archived articles. Contact names or information may be out of date. We regret any inconvenience.