ISO & Agent Weekly Newsletter features Financial Transaction Services in an article by Ed McKinley
CLEVELAND, OH / CHICAGO, IL – January 13, 2012
Financial Transaction Services, LLC was recently featured in the ISO & Agent Weekly Newsletter with the following article by Ed McKinley.
See the article in a PDF of the newsletter here.
Super ISO’s Technology Reduces Merchants’ B2B Interchange Fee
Financial Transaction Services LLC wants to help merchants reduce interchange rates on business-to-business transactions and has developed the technology to do it.
Why? Because the company, a super ISO in terms of size and technology, views its interchange-optimization strategy as a major point of differentiation for its inside sales team and its independent sales organizations and agents. Besides, reducing merchants’ interchange expenses enhances the company’s consultative approach to sales and eases the pressure to reduce the fees it charges.
After all, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide have made no secret of the information merchants must capture at the point of sale to qualify for reduced interchange rates, according to Angelo Grecco, Financial Transaction Service director of ISO sales.
That information ranges from inventory codes and invoice numbers to unit counts and freight charges, says Kevin Gainer, the company’s director of sales and strategic alliances.
With the company’s system, merchants enter the information necessary to qualify for Level 3 interchange rates onto virtual computers or onto their enterprise-wide information-technology systems, says Gainer. They need to enter the data only once.
After that initial data entry, the swipe of a card or the keying-in of minimal card information automatically attaches the Level 3 data to the transaction and qualifies it for an interchange rate that is lower than it would be without the information, he notes.
The company calls the process that adds the information to the transaction the “interchange optimization tool,” says Grecco.
The Financial Transaction Services internal sales team began using the tool last year, and the company intends to make it available to its ISOs this year, says Grecco.
“We are not going to compete with our own ISOs,” Gainer says of the decision to share the tool.
The company developed the optimization-tool technology in-house and minimizes its reliance on outside technology vendors.
Financial Transaction Services has about 1,000 ISOs and agents, although not all are active, Grecco says. The company handled 120 million transactions worth $5.3 billion in 2011, he says.
It has 25,000 merchants and is adding about 1,000 merchants per month by combining acquisition with organic growth, says Grecco. The company maintains its headquarters in Highland Hills, Ohio, and has offices in Chicago and Pittsburgh.
About Financial Transaction Services
FTS is a full-service provider of electronic transaction processing services for merchants, independent sales organizations (ISOs), financial institutions, businesses and government institutions. FTS offers a comprehensive line of solutions for credit and debit cards, gift cards, electronic check conversion, verification and guarantee as well as terminal services and online Payment Gateway Solutions. FTS is powered by First Data Corporation and is a registered ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank N.A. For more information, visit www.ftservice.com.
