est Payment Processing Players

Best Processor:
First Data

Voting was very close in this top voting category. The five Advisory Board nominees split 83% of the votes, with a difference of only 1 or 2 percentage points separating each ranking 2 through 5. Write-in nominations included 18 additional companies.

The processors were ranked as:

1. First Data-20%
2. Paymentech-17%
3. NPC-16%
4. United Bank Card-5%
5. Vital Merchant Services-14%

Best Value-added (Equipment) Reseller:
TASQ

Equipment deployment can be the lynchpin of the revenue stream for Merchant Level Salespersons. There were two nominations in this category, and they garnered a total of 80% of the respondents between them. The other 20% voted "Other" and listed 11 additional companies.

The Top 2 VARs voted to the "Best" were:

1. TASQ-61%
2. JR's P.O.S. Depot-19%

Best Leasing Provider:
CIT Lease Finance Group

In this category we had three nominations; however, "Other" came in as the No. 2 provider with 25% of the votes. Thirteen separate companies were listed by the respondents as their favorite leasing company, which tells us all that there are a lot of sources for leasing.

The Top 3 Leasing Providers were:

1. CIT Lease Finance Group-41%
2. Other-25%
3. Integrated Leasing-23%

Best POS Terminal:
Nurit 2085

It's often said that the "best terminal" is the one the salesperson has in the trunk. However, through your votes, Green Sheet readers have shown a strong preference for certain equipment. With six nominations in this category, it is interesting to note that 8% of respondents voted "Other," listing a total of nine additional terminals. The Top 2 terminals voted to be the "Best" were:

1. Nurit 2085-49%
2. Omni 3200 or 3750-21%

Best ISO Organization:
Bridgeview Payment Solutions

Bridgeview Payment Solutions received a strong lead over any other ISO organization in the balloting process. However, the field included a great many more companies.

The organizations ranked two through five shared 46% of the votes cast, and the remaining 29% was shared among 44 additional companies, none of which garnered more than 2% of the votes cast.

The Top 5 ISO Organizations were:

1. Bridgeview Payment Solutions-25%
2. CPS/Concord-17%
3. United Bank Card-16%
4. Lynk Systems-10%
5. Barons Financial Group-2%
   ---In alphabetical order, the Top 5 write-in nominees were:
6. Chase Merchant Services
7. Heartland Payment Systems
8. Retriever
9. Total Merchant Services
10. TransPay Processing

If you are a Merchant Level Salesperson and are trying to get a handle on ISOs, you may want to take a look at the MLS Forum on www.greensheet.com.

Readers have been asking for and receiving an applause meter on a number of industry players, including Bridgeview Payment Solutions, North American Bancard, 1st National Processing, ABANCO and Vequity Financial Group, to name just a few.

In terms of the notes that readers sent us about their favorite ISO, they tended to mirror the comments on the Forum.

Best Customer Service by an ISO:
United Bank Card

Tabulating the ballots in this category was even more problematic than the one above. Of the votes cast, the four companies nominated by the Advisory Board shared 53% of the vote; 47% voted "Other."

Of the 47% who voted "Other," 9% did not indicate a company. The remaining votes were shared among 46 companies.

The named nominees were ranked as follows:

1. United Bank Card-24%
2. TransPay Processing-12%
3. Innovative Merchant Solutions-11%
4. Barons Financial Group-6%
   ---In alphabetical order, the Top 5 write-in nominees were:
5. Bridgeview Payment Solutions
6. Cynergy Data
7. First Data Merchant Services
8. Heartland Payment Systems
9. Lynk Systems

In addition to the six "Best of" categories, we asked two additional questions on our balloting: What was the most Influential Technological Advance over the last year, and who is the Most Influential Industry Leader?

Most Influential Technological Advance:
Wireless

Green Sheet readers were quite decisive when it came to naming the most influential technological advance in payment processing. More than 42% stated that wireless payment systems won this honor.

Check truncation came in second place with 29% of the votes cast, followed by Hypercom's ICE technology with 15%.

Most Influential Industry Leader:
Larry Stone

The named nominees in this category shared 78% of the votes cast.

1. Larry Stone-28%
2. The courts (We guess for resolving the CMS issue.)-24%
3. Joe Kaplan-15%
4. Mary Dees-11%
5. Other-22%

We thank all of our readers who took the time to participate in the survey. We have received numerous requests over the years to conduct this type of balloting. Please let us know if you would like to see this repeated next year. Send your comments to paul@greensheet.com.