MWAA to honor Ken Musante

In recognition of Ken Musante's upcoming Lifetime Achievement Award at the Midwest Acquirers Association conference, The Green Sheet is pleased to share this timely conversation between Musante and Allen Kopelman, CEO of Nationwide Payment Systems and host of the B2B Vault podcast.

From early days at Wells Fargo to launching multiple successful ventures—including Eureka Payments and Napa Payments & Consulting—Musante's story is one of insight, resilience, and enduring impact. Read on, as Kopelman shares highlights from the discussion, in which two industry veterans reflect on the evolving payments landscape and the lessons learned along the way.

A memorable career begins

Days away from his receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Midwest Acquirers Association's annual conference, I interviewed Ken Musante, founder and president of Napa Payments and Consulting at B2B Vault: The Biz to Biz Podcast.

In opening comments, I mentioned that Musante has been in the business longer than I have, three and a half decades to be exact. And unlike most, who fell into this industry, he got into payments after earning a bachelor's degree at UC Davis, MBA at Golden Gate University, and post-graduate degree at the Pacific Coast Banking School.

"I had the perfect first job out of college at Wells Fargo, learning the functional areas of issuing, from plastic card production, collections, and fraud disputes to customer service," he said. "I got to see all of it, and it was a great foundational build for my career."

Issuing to acquiring

Musante eventually transitioned to acquiring at Wells Fargo, supervising a technical support desk that supported merchants, including large enterprises that needed dedicated lease lines to run their businesses. What a crazy time! POS equipment ran on hard-wire phone lines in those days before anyone ever heard of WiFi or Broadband connectivity.

In recollecting other roles, which included SVP at Humboldt Bank Merchant Services, founder and president at Humboldt Merchant Services, and EVP and chief sales officer at Moneris Solutions, co-founder and president at Eureka Payments, all the way to his current solo consulting practice at Napa Payments & Consulting, he had nothing but praise for colleagues, managers, and direct reports.

Resilience and gratitude

Musante recalled when the FDIC took over Humboldt Bank's merchant services division in 2008 during the Great Recession. FDIC was an honorable organization, he said, but had no idea how a merchant services organization is run. A portion of Humboldt Merchant Services was sold to Moneris Solutions and other assets were sold to North, formerly North American Bancard, which continues to own and run Humboldt Merchant Services today. 
Musante led the Humboldt integration at Moneris, managing direct sales, partner sales and bank sales, improving efficiencies and increasing revenue across all sales channels. In 2010, he co-founded Eureka Payments with friends Steve Kimberling and Scott Bartlett, the same year he began writing The Green Sheet's Street Smarts column.

Changing partners

Finding good partners was an issue for Eureka Payments, Musante noted, and continues to challenge ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs) today. I mentioned one of my pet peeves, which is processor-agnostic software companies that suddenly get acquired and begin to poach ISOs' and MLSs' hard-won merchant accounts.

"You have to recognize which ones are your partners, which are competition, and which are cooperators who will at times cooperate and at other times compete with you," he said.

Street SmartsSM

In his final Street Smarts column, published March 28, 2011, Musante wrote, "Scott Bartlett and Steve Kimberling had started an ISO, Eureka Payments LLC, early in 2010. With an alteration of the business plan, I decided to take the leap and join a cash-starved startup."

Musante recalled that he and his friends were the whole enchilada, responsible for every aspect of the business. They worked hard to attract investors and raise capital to fund marketing and operations until their residuals eventually kicked in.

"I'll close my last article with the now-familiar slogan that arose when I joined Eureka Payments," he wrote. "We all had too many things to do and difficulty prioritizing. It remains as apt now as it was then: when in doubt, sell something."

Congratulations, Ken Musante, on your stellar payments industry career and well-deserved lifetime achievement award. The entire episode is available on B2B Vault, YouTube and Spotify.  

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