Single-source issuing, acquiring to improve bottom lines

Bob Kaufman founded ConnexPay in 2017 after serving as senior vice president, and later, CFO of payments services at U.S. Bank, where he led innovation across the payments division. During his nearly 20-year tenure with the bank, he saw companies struggle to access cost-effective payment services in an industry that was mostly unable to adapt to their needs. "I wanted to disrupt the status quo by combining acquiring and issuing in one platform to not only solve those pain points, but also generate vast cost savings for companies, while minimizing risks," he said.

Kaufman noted that to fulfill company objectives of measurable ROI, real-time payments and proactive needs assessment, ConnexPay:

• Saves customers significant amounts of money by decreasing costs and increasing revenue (measurable ROI)
• Allows travel companies to access incoming customer funds in real time, enabling them to pay suppliers in real time (real-time payments)
• Is focused on customer needs, anticipating potential problems, and offering flexible, scalable, smart services through a single integration into one platform with one contract (proactive needs assessment)

Adapting, growing, serving

Kaufman appointed Anant Patel as ConnexPay's president of international markets in January 2022, noting his experience spans the entire payments ecosystem. Patel was instrumental in leading fintech and corporate payment businesses internationally and has deep industry experience that complements ConnexPay's leadership team, Kaufman added. "Overall, we have over 70 employees and counting across the globe, doubling in 2022 alone," Kaufman said, pointing out that employee referrals account for 95 percent of new hires. The company has grown 500 percent in the past year, he added, doubling its customer base and processing an average of $35 million in daily transaction value with a $10 billion annual run rate. ConnexPay integrates payments acceptance and issuance inside a single platform; other providers offer both services but in separate, fragmented systems, Kaufman said. By contrast, he added, ConnexPay seamlessly connects accepting and making payments, improving cash flow.

Transformative partnerships

Strategic investments have helped ConnexPay evolve from its initial goal of transforming travel industry payments to offerings that work for any company in any sector, Kaufman stated. In addition to combining issuing and acceptance, the company described additional offerings as follows:

• Intelligent purchases routing technology: Proprietary, patent-pending technology enables merchants to issue virtual cards on multiple BINs, intelligently routed by the system to maximize rebate value for each client.
• Built-in fraud prevention and chargeback management: Comprehensive tools alleviate the biggest pain points and profit drains by providing continuous fraud monitoring and managing of inquiries, disputes and chargebacks.

Kaufman believes that combining both sides of payment processing inside a single platform can help ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs) "get a foot in the door" when talking to clients. "We are extremely focused on working effectively with ISOs and MLSs," he said. "Having had decades of experience in this industry, we're acutely aware that your reputation is going to be what makes or breaks your company, so we're always working to build that reputation by leaving our clients with a good impression."

Continuous growth

Looking ahead, Kaufman said investments of $145 million from FTV Capital and several other investors will fuel ConnexPay's worldwide expansion. As the company continues to focus on travel companies and ecommerce intermediaries in the United States, this new infusion of capital is expected to enable the company to launch its payments technology in Europe and beyond. This, Kaufman noted, will mean opening thousands more potential clients globally and further enhancing ConnexPay's payments platform heading into 2023.

"As we stand today, ConnexPay serves over 100 clients across various industries with best-in-class customer retention," Kaufman said. "We're heavily invested in the health and success of our customers, and as we continue to improve our platform, our customers improve monetization of their businesses. We're looking forward to pushing the envelope further."

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