Get more than you pay for

Keith Mottas, Chief Executive Officer of the payment processing company Instant Credit Manager, believes the saying "You get what you pay for" is not true at his company. "We take into consideration the small guys," Mottas said. "They can't afford to go out and spend thousands of dollars monthly, if it's a one- or two-man office, to license software month in and month out. Other companies charge a premium for features we let our smaller customers use for free at no additional cost."

Instant Credit Manager, founded in 2001, boasts a fully integrated, total merchant management solution for ISOs, merchant level salespeople (MLSs), financial institutions, and check and payment processors. The software system is designed to be highly customizable and flexible, allowing users to make changes to the software specific to their business needs.

The software enables users to open online bank accounts, perform cash advances, conduct check processing, process gift and loyalty programs, as well as evaluate credit approval and credit underwriting. For ISOs, the software also provides tools previously only available to big corporations such as the ability to set up marketing campaigns, receive, track and upload leads, schedule appointments, and conduct marketing campaigns as ISO agents.

Ability to change denotes intelligence

Mottas feels that expensive, inflexible customer relationship management systems in the market today are a reason why many ISOs and MLSs are not integrating new technology to take their businesses to the next level. "I'm a firm believer in automation, and I'd rather have a computer system do the grunt work for me than have a human do it," Mottas said. "We hear stories of guys out there asking merchants to complete PDF applications and still using spreadsheets to track customers as opposed to using our system in the cloud. It doesn't matter where you are; as long as you have cell access, you can log into our software whether it is a tablet, a smartphone, whatever the case may be."

Perhaps the biggest concern for ISOs and MLSs today is data security. Headlines in the news constantly report about the latest breaches of customer data. Mottas believes all payment data is secure with his company, perhaps more so than most other companies out there. "What sets us apart from our competitors is the platform we designed on," he said. "We are truly a stand-alone system. We are not dependent on another software package to run us. We are developing our own encryption system because there are other things that would be easier to do as opposed to contracting with third-party providers. Our customers can have a private server with no one else on it. It is encrypted with firewalls. The encryption is key-based and the keys are not stored on the same server."

The software system for Instant Credit Manager is fully integrated with the cloud and far more agile than regular traditional metal servers, Mottas noted. In addition, ISOs and MLSs that want more database capacity can upgrade to more hard drive space or RAM instantly at the touch of a button. Also, you do not need to be a software guru to understand how to use the software which is very simple and intuitive, he added.

Instant Credit Manager believes that price is its ultimate trump card. "We are not dependent on another software package to run us," Mottas said. "Consequently, if you want to use a competitor's software package, you are going to pay a per-user fee, which can get very expensive. Why re-create the wheel and spend millions of dollars to develop this kind of software when we have it, and it's less expensive to lease it from us?"

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