Latest / Leaders In Payments / Special Series: Powering Payments Together with Adam Oberman, President of Payroc | Episode 430

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Special Series: Powering Payments Together with Adam Oberman, President of Payroc | Episode 430 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Powering Payments Together a special three-part series on how Payrock helps ISVs scale smarter.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: You'll hear Payrock's vision for the future of integrated payments, a behind-the-scenes look at their ISV program and a real-world success story from one of their partners.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Three episodes, one mission helping ISVs grow faster.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Hello everyone and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, greg Myers.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: This episode is part of our three-part series titled Powering Payments Together how Payrock Helps ISVs Scale Smarter, and is being brought to you by Payrock.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Today we're going to be discussing how Payrock's vision and go-to-market strategy align with the evolving world of integrated payments.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: In our second episode, we're going to be going inside the ISV program at Payrock to better understand how they partner and support ISVs.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: And in the final episode in the series, we're going to be doing a partner spotlight where you will hear directly from an ISV about their experience with Payrock and how Payrock has helped them overcome integration challenges, unlock new revenue streams and scale faster.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: To kick off the series, we have a very special guest Adam Oberman, the president at Payrock them overcome integration challenges, unlock new revenue streams and scale faster.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: To kick off the series, we have a very special guest Adam Oberman, the president at Payrock.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: So, adam, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me, greg.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: It's an honor, great.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: So, just so folks know, adam has been with us before, about two years ago.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: He's the president at Payrock.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: So, if you don't mind, before we dive into the topic at hand.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Tell our audience a little bit about yourself.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Maybe your professional?
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: journey and a little bit about Payrock.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, thank you Appreciate that Well, welcome everybody.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: I've been in the industry for around 21 years now, started when I was 21 years old, so you could do the math Started at a risk and underwriting for a little company called Retriever Payment Systems and made my way up, started my own ISO with my brother Nick and my cousin Ryan, and then formed into what is known as now Payrock.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: So, look, the journey that's gotten me here is a lot of hard work and determination, but first and foremost, god's gotten me here.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: God's helped me through the way.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: I am a very faithful and faith-driven individual, so without him, we wouldn't be sitting here.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't be sitting here.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: I have a wonderful wife and six little kids.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, six kids.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: It is a blessing.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Yes, my family can be crazy at times.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: Work can be crazy at times with the 1,200 plus employees, but I look at it as a true blessing and an honor to do what I'm doing, because I love what I'm doing and I love being a father to the six kids, and you know as good as a husband I could be to my amazing wife, so that's really some backstory to me.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Okay, great.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: So maybe, for those who aren't familiar, give us a quick overview of Payrock and maybe the role it plays in the payments ecosystem.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: Historically people have thought Payrock.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: When they thought of Payrock they thought of an ISO, an agent shop.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Sure, we are.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: That's in our DNA.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: That's what I started to do.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: I started selling and knocking on doors myself 20 years ago.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: But we've had to evolve.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: Just like the world is evolving into more of the integrated product-led merchant-facing organization, so today product-led merchant-facing organizations.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: So today we serve all types of clients.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: You name it, we serve it.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: We are a global company.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Today we look to expand even further in the global outreach of what we're doing with some of our acquisitions.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: But we're a fairly large company, I mean when you compare us on the scale of others.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: But the good thing about Payrock is we do it differently.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: We've always did it differently.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: It's a people and people-led organization.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: It's people doing business with people.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: Sure, we have machines.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Sure, there's AI out there.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: Sure, we have a huge tech and product organization.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: But at the end of the day it's so that people touch, it's so that people integration.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: And look, we have shifted in the last couple of years with some of our acquisitions to more of a technology-led, with some of our gateways, some of our platforms, some of our hubs, some of the verticals that we serve.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: We're not that agent ISO partner company that everyone views us as anymore.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: We're a lot broader than that, but our bread and butter, of course, is still the agent and ISO world, and we have some great legacy partners that have still partnered with Payrock for geez now 20 years now.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: So we're never going to look past that because that's what's gotten us here.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: But of course there's always going to be a shift.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, great.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: So tell us about your role at Payrock and then maybe what excites you about the future of payments.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: My role at Payrock is really, I would say I'm the counselor.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: I'm joking, no, it's such a fun role.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: You look at the company that we've evolved into.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: When I look back, thinking, you know three people sitting in a 10 by 10 room 20 years ago to hiring our first employee in 2010, to now having 1200 employees and three more acquisitions coming on over 1,500 employees.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: It truly is a blessing.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: I love what I do.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: I am very much in the weeds when it comes to sales, finance and product.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: I have a finance and accounting background, but what's in my blood is sales, sales and marketing.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: I'm learning this thing that we call tech and product.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: I've had to learn it the good way and the hard way, but I have such a strong leadership team that you don't really need to get into the weeds with your CTO or your CPO or even your COO, because they know what they're doing.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: They wouldn't be here if they didn't know what they're doing.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: So, look, I oversee as much as I can, I get involved where I can and I try to stay out of the weeds and I try to be as strategic as possible and it is a rare combination with our CEO being my father.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: A lot of people say how does that even work?
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: We've worked together for so long and we're so much alike that it actually works.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: We're connected at the hip.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: If he's in California and I'm in Florida, we know what we're doing and that's the beauty of it.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: And sure, around the dinner table you're going to talk about work and your mom and your wife is not going to be happy with it, but at the end of the day it's in our blood, it's what we love to do.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: And my thing is I've started it since the beginning I want to be involved as much as I can.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: I don't know everything anymore because it's such a large organization now, but I know we still have our core values and the main thing I always talk about is always do what's right, even when someone's not looking, because it's going to catch up to you.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: And that's how I've guided this organization and that's what I've done since the beginning and I try to put that out to all the employees and all the partners that hey, even if we mess up, we're going to do what's right at the end.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: What excites you about payments and about the future of payments?
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, what excites me about payments is the unknown.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: It's ever-changing.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: It changes daily from integrated payments to embedded payments, to SaaS, to PaaS, to verticals that people are getting into.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: Now to the experience that people are giving their partners, and what excites me the most is just really that it's evolving.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: It's not going anywhere.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Payments are not going to go away.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: People talk about well, here comes Bitcoin and here comes this, another form of currency or this new wave.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: We're still here.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: I've been doing it for 21 years.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: Sure, things have changed, but at the end of the day, it's still the core.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: You have to serve the end customer.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: The partner is the one that pays the bills, and if you're not partner centric, then you're not going to win in this marketplace.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: So let's dive into the state of integrated payments.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I mean the concept of integrating payments into ISVs or software companies.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: I mean it really isn't anything new.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: It's been around for a while.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Tons of press out there.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: So what do software companies need to know about integrated payments?
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: For most ISVs, payments are already embedded.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: The real question is whether their payments partner is helping them grow.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: I talked about being a payment partner and being that advisor.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: The integration is just a starting line, but the success it actually comes from a partner like ourselves who provides a strategic management, the white glove support.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: You know doing what's right, and it makes payments a true growth driver rather than a distraction, because a lot of people are out there saying it's just such a distraction.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: I don't know how to get it seamless, I don't know the right way to accept the payment.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: The challenge isn't if the payments are integrated, it's how well are they driving growth?
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Are they driving growth to the business?
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: Is it a growth driver or not?
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: And so a lot of people look at payments of oh, I'm just going to collect the payment and move on.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: That's really not everything.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: You have to not only collect the payment, but you have to make the experience better than the last person and the support.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: The support is a differentiator If you think about it.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: People do business with people.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: Still, great APIs and docs will get you live, but at the end of the day, the ongoing people support are what makes the ISVs and the merchants successful, the APIs will win the demo.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: Don't get me wrong.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: We've won a lot of demos on APIs, but it's that white glove partner service and the customer experience wins relationships.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: And it's staying humble and true to saying I messed up, I didn't deliver the service I was going to give you.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: Let me go and fix it.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: Responsiveness One size fits all programs could limit ISVs as they scale.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: You can't have one size fits all.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: Isvs need partners who adopt payment models to fit their stage of maturity, the vertical needs and the go-to-market strategy.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: So look, they don't need another.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: API.
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: The ISVs don't need another API.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: They need a partner, like I was talking about with Payrock, who makes payments a growth engine through support, flexibility and strategic alignment.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: Because, at the end of the day, if you're just going to plug in a payments engine and not be their payment advisor or their support model, you're not going to help that client grow 10% year over year.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Well, let's peel the onion back a little bit.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: What are the trends that you're seeing?
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: That's shaping the decision-making in this space?
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: Well, people want that white glove service.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: Of course, like I said, it's to support the ISV is going to mature.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: If they don't mature, they're never growing, they're never going to expand past their fishbowl.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: And it's Look, it's also the experience.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: I talk about experience a lot.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: You can ask my leadership team.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: If you give that end customer the experience, the product, the tech, the sales, the support will come as a bystander to that.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: You got to make it seamless for every layer you know, for the ISVs, for their merchants, for the merchant's customer.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: I look at it like Uber.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: How easy is Uber?
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: Just like Uber, made payments invisible.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: They really did.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: The ISVs now expect payments to be frictionless, which is hard.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: You got to fuel the merchant loyalty, cardholder satisfaction and ultimately, the ISV retention and long-term growth.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: Because you got to grow with that partner.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: You got to be flexible.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: You got to give them the experience across all the layers.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: You got to be transparent with them and the onboarding is so important.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: If that client, that merchant, that cardholder has a bad experience, onboarding or that first touch, it's not going to be a good experience.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: The retention you got to look at it as a growth driver.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: Frictionalist payments it equals happier cardholders.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: Happier cardholders equals stickier merchants.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Stickier merchants equals ISVs with higher retention and valuation.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: And then, of course, global expansion.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: We are very big in the global expansion of what we're doing and how we're doing it, because they demand.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: These ISVs demand global scale At the end of the day, the multi-currency, the local acquiring, the compliance.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: They need that from day one.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: So when you kind of step back and look at the end of the day, the multi-currency, the local acquiring the compliance they need that from day one.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: So when you kind of step back and look at the integrated payments kind of just marketplace, where do you see the industry headed Kind of?
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Where do you feel maybe it's saturated?
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Where are some opportunities?
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Where is it underserved?
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Where's the potential?
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Any thoughts on that?
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: So integrated payments it's no longer just a feature, it's becoming a financial backbone of SaaS.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: If you think about it, izs are shifting from payments as an add-on to payments as a core revenue stream.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: It's so important that people understand what I just said, because it's a revenue stream.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: Now it's the market that's demanding low-code integration.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: No one wants to code for hours upon days, upon weeks, upon months to get this integration live.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: The real winners are going to be those who pair with clean APIs.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Look, if you have a clean API, it's golden, but they want that white-glove partner support still.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: The APIs are great, but they still want that touch.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: They want to deliver compliance out of the box and enable ISVs to scale globally.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: And look in five years the strongest platforms won't just process payments.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: They're not going to.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: They'll power verticalized global payment ecosystems and that's what we're trying to do here at Payrock.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Isvs are monetizing payments as 20% to 40% of their revenue.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: That's huge.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: Investors increasingly value software companies with integrated payments built in.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: When you look at valuations of all these integrated SaaS-led companies, they look at that and what are they getting from that revenue add-on?
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: Pick a vertical and dominate it, and I talk about global scale.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Global scale on day one is such a commodity.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: You have to look at being global, because these ISVs are now demanding multi-currency, cross-border compliance and I don't know how many companies you deal with that, but I get that on a daily basis.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: Right before this call, I was on a call with an ISV that needed multi-currency, that needed one experience, that needed one onboarding, and there's a call with an ISV that needed multi-currency, that needed one experience, that needed one onboarding, and there's a lot of clients and partners out there that's not going to give them that first Look.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: Isvs expect the best of both worlds clean developer experiences and real partner guidance.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that's a great kind of overview of the market and kind of what's going on in the space.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit now about Payrock and how that connects to the integrated space.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: So, if you don't mind, would you share what is Payrock's big vision and what are you building towards?
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: We're building towards a scalable infrastructure to where people could just latch on and plug right in.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: You don't want someone that comes on board that takes months to know, months to figure out what our code is or our API is.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: You know we've invested heavily in Northern Ireland and our tech and product.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: We have many employees out there, from if it's a Cayenne you know old team or the TESIS team to where we believe in what they've done in the past and now they're doing it again for Payrock, and it's such a blessing that we have them in the background building what we need.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: We want people to just come on and say this is my home.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: These are real people.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: They do business with people, they're accessible, they're not beating around the bush and what they say is what they're going to do.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: And if we don't do that, we make it right by the customer and that's really it's the integrity that you get out of that.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: I'm really big on integrity.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: We actually acquired a company called Integrity Payment Systems in 2018.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: And I wanted to keep that name within our name because integrity is so big in this industry, because you're going to get a lot of people that are just selling you the service or selling you the product or the tech just to make a quick buck.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: At the end of the day, if you don't have the integrity and you don't have a well-established name in the industry, you're going to get beat up and what we're building is something special that people want to be a part of.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: When we hire an employee, they don't want to leave, they want to be here.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: They love it here.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: They love the flexibility when it comes to their family and the outings that they have with their family.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: They love the innovation that they have.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: Here at Payrock, to be innovators, to make a difference.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: The partners come on because of the flexibility and the ease and the accessibility.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: And sure, we're not great at everything.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: At the end of the day, you can't be great at everything.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: You can be great at a couple of things, but what we try to be great on is the things that our partner needs.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: At the end of the day, we're all trying to do what's best for the end client.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: If you take care of that customer, everything else is taken care of.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well, you recently announced a few acquisitions BlueSnap, PayIQ, Agalisa, a few, maybe even a few others but how do those support kind of that bigger vision that you're talking about?
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, great question.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: I'll start with PayIQ.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: Look, PayIQ is end to end, base one, base two.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: It's something that we've always had in our wants and hopes and dreams, ever since my father joined us in 2015.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: He always said I want to do this and we've done 90% of it, and that last 10% is plugging in PayIQ to really have the end-to-end experience and transaction flow to where we control our own destiny.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: Payiq is a differentiator for us.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: It's something that we've always aspired and something we're truly excited about really sinking our teeth in to get the platform up and live as soon as possible.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: The organization at PayRock knows this is the first, most important thing that we have to do, because it's going to give us more flexibility, more growth, more scale, more needs for our partner and more transparency.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: Payiq comes with something that's going to be transformational to the organization.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: Bluesnap is that global scale.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: You look for the global scale.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: The large clients comes with an amazing leadership team, an amazing employee roster that we're excited to plug in and cross-pollinate between our integrated team and their integrated team.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: We've already worked with them on three very, very large opportunities.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: Bluesnap, that is, and it's just been easy.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: That's what I'm looking for.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: I'm looking for easy, seamless and once we integrate everything which we integrate companies as fast as possible, once we integrate everything in the Payrock ecosystem, then there's that orchestration layer that's going to allow us to embed payments.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: That's what I'm most excited about, because I kept talking about that global reach.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: With adding BlueSnap, we will have that global reach.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: Right now we are very big in Puerto Rico and Canada and sure, we have clients in Europe and Ireland and Mexico, but at the end of the day, we're not controlling our own destiny in all those areas.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: With BlueSnap, it really gives us something that's a differentiator.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: And I talked about Puerto Rico.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: The Agaliza acquisition is an amazing gateway down in Puerto Rico and the Dominican that powers our business down in Puerto Rico called Dynamics Payment Systems.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: Dynamics Payment Systems was an acquisition three years ago and they're doing an amazing job on the island.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: Evertech is the biggest competitor down there but every single day we're taking market share from them and with the control that we will get with Aga Lisa, it controls our own destiny and what to do, how to be flexible and how to really give that customer the best experience possible, because Aga Lisa comes with a great staff that knows payments and they know what to do to win.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: They're creative and they're agile, and that's what I'm most excited about.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've had Blue Snap, prior CEO, current CEO.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: We've had them both on the show in the last five years.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: I guess I think they were one of the, I think, first 10 episodes that we ever did, so very familiar with BlueSnap.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Well, congratulations on all those acquisitions, by the way, and look forward to seeing how they all get integrated.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Well, speaking specifically about your ISV program and we're going to dive deep into this, I think, in the second episode but can you tell us sort of what are the programs that you offer ISVs?
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: And I talked to a lot of companies like Payrock that offer, you know, all different things from ISVs that are just starting out to those who you've been talking about, that are maybe ready to go global, but there's a lot of gap in between there.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: So maybe, if you don't mind, walk us through at a high level what those programs are that you offer ISVs.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: When we first encounter an ISV it's kind of like a doctor's approach to where we say what's your pain points, what don't you like about your current provider, what's hurting you, how can we help fix that?
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: Because we don't know that.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: We try to solve what they don't have today and it comes with the flexibility and the experience that we're going to give their end customers.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: You know we try to meet the ISVs where they are, you know, offering right size programs that does match their stage of maturity.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: I talk about low code a lot.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: It's that low code integrations for speed.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: It's that ISO style.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: You know we come from the ISO world.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: It's that ISO style model for those who want the full control.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: Not everybody wants the full control of that.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: So look, some prefer to stay out of the payments business and choose their referral models, which I don't blame them, because it's very complex and very detailed, while others want to lean into the monetization and brand their own ownership.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: Some want to control everything and control their own destiny.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: So, beyond the program type, we do layer in vertical playbooks.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: We try to help them with strategy, distribution opportunities how can we work together?
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: And then co-marketing support so the ISV can scale both software and payments revenue side by side, because revenue, revenue, revenue that's what drives the business.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: So you know we break it up in different stages and we look at different approaches.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: The early stage is how fast can we get you live?
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: How can your team work with our team, our APIs?
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: We have a full team that just is there to integrate with clients and to help them get live as fast as possible.
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: Stage two is how can we look at growth opportunities and look to expand your business from what you're doing today, if it's on experience, if it's on product, if it's on more visibility or transparency.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: And then it's really looking at the enterprise, the orchestration layer, the global scale.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: Are you scaled globally?
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: Are you accepting payments cross-border?
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: If you are, how are you accepting them?
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: What kind of fees are you getting hit with?
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: And then it's really the go-to-market, beyond integration, the co-marketing, the co-selling them as a partner.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: How can we do this together?
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: I have a lot of partners at Payrock.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: At the end of the day, I look at all of these ISV clients like one of my partners If it's our COO, cfo, cpo, whatever that is.
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: But look, going to market with an ISV is about flexibility.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: I talked about flexibility, a lot Right-sized programs about flexibility.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: I talked about flexibility a lot Right-sized programs, verticalized strategies and go-to-market support to grow within the business.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: We understand it's complex, we understand it's a lot and we try to offer ISVs that payment's in a box the experience, the control, the flexibility and we ask them their pain points and we try to fix their pain points and enhance what they don't see today.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: So I think we have a good idea of sort of the Payrock vision, understanding your integrated payments, isv programs.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: But let's flip it.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: What's in it for them?
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: What's in it for the ISVs?
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: What's the value for them?
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: So great question.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: I think the value is that feel of protection.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: Our approach matters because it does protect the ISVs.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: There's many ways that the ISVs don't see it, but they protect the ISVs, focus and accelerates their growth.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: We try to help them grow any way we can with the right model and partner support, because we pride ourselves on support.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: They can monetize payments without even over-engineering things the differentiation and vertical soft solutions and softwares.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: How can they expand faster through distribution and scale globally without being boxed in?
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: A lot of companies will box you in and it doesn't feel right.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: It feels like you just have to sit there and do what's inside of these walls.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: We try to expand outside that box and get the partner to think, hey, what haven't you thought about?
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: We've done this quite a while.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: How can we help expand you?
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: In short, we turn payments in a competitive advantage for a long-term growth engine because they need to grow.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: They need to grow, like I said, the 10% year over year, maybe it's 20%, whatever that may be to them, but at the end of the day, if they're not growing, they're not monetizing payments.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: 20%, whatever that may be to them, but at the end of the day, if they're not growing.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: They're not monetizing payments, they're never going to win in the marketplace.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: The tailored flows per vertical.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: You got to look at the vertical and say, okay, what vertical are you in?
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: What kind of products, what kind of technology can we give you that's going to bring stronger merchant adoption, that's going to bring stronger clients over to you.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: We like to expand the reach wherever we can.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: I talk about globally.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: And then, of course, we pride ourselves on our risk and our underwriting and how we do things.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: We always like to take the risk and reduce the risk out of all of our partners and our ISVs.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: How can we be a processor agnostic architecture plus compliance built in?
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: How can we give that customer everything within that one box but looking outside saying, hey, this is what we're going to do for you and this is how we're going to do it?
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: And this comes down to trust.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of trust.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: I trust people way too early.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Sometimes my wife says but I'm a very trustworthy person and if we show you we're honest and we do the right thing, it's a building process, but it's built on trust.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: It's human-centered support and ongoing, ongoing merchant support.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: It's the onboarding that we give, the merchant satisfaction, the stickiness, Because once we board an ISV, we don't want them to lose their clients.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: How can we create that stickiness for them?
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: So look the way Payrock does go to market, because there's different ways that we do go to market.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: It does matter.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: They don't need a one-size-fits-all partner.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: They need a partner who's going to scale with them, who's going to sit next to them and strategize with them and be innovative with them and say what's next?
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: How can we get you to that next level?
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: How can we help you grow your revenue and how can we help you dominate Not only win, but dominate the vertical you're in, Because, at the end of the day, if they're not winning, we're not winning.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: We have a whole team that just focuses on growing the clients.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's their main goal.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Hey, this is what you do.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: Go grow our ISVs, Take them from here to here, Help them, partner with them give them experience.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: So that's really how we help people.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Well, let's wrap up by talking a little bit about the future.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: So let's say you go to dinner with the CEO of a SaaS company.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: What do you tell him or her they should be thinking about, maybe for the rest of 2025 and into 2026, when it comes to this space?
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: Well, I would say by 2026, payment is going to be more than a utility.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: It really is.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: It's going to be a core driver of growth and global competitiveness for ISVs the ISVs that aren't global today.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: I suggest you find a partner that you could do that with, because it's coming and it's going to come soon.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: The key question from them, from these ISVs, is how quickly can I adopt and scale?
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: Can I scale with the partner I'm with?
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: How ready am I to support merchants globally?
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: They have to be asking themselves these questions because this is all coming down the line.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: How do I make payments feel seamless to my merchants while maximizing revenue?
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Isvs who partner for flexibility, vertical expertise and global reach are going to be the ones that are pacing the competition.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: Clean APIs alone won't be the differentiator anymore.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: They just won't.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: Isvs are going to expect API first, global scale, flexibility and vertical specialization.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: If you're not going to get that and your head's not there thinking about the future, you're going to lose.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: So look to end the year out in 2026, the ISVs are going to pull ahead, are the ones who treat payments.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: They don't treat them as an afterthought.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: They're going to be front and center.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: They look at it as a growth strategy built for a global scale.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: And if they're not looking at it like that and they're just looking at it as, oh, it's just another add-on, it's just going to be another add-on and they're going to slowly lose market share, and that's not something that we want to see with our partners or our clients.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: I don't want to see that in the industry.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: I want to see everybody win.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: I love when I watch people win.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Well, if you're talking to a SaaS company or an ISV that hasn't even embedded payments yet, why would you tell them to do it right now?
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: You know the cost of waiting is just lost revenue.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: It really is when you're going to wait and wait and wait.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: I'm a move fast type of guy.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, like I said, I have six kids in 10 years.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: I like to move very fast.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: But look, you're going to be lost.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: The valuation is going to go down if you don't embed the payments as soon as possible.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: They're not just growing faster, they're building more valuable companies.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: They really are the companies that you see that are growing are doing it right with the right partner.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: It's been a great discussion.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: One last question.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: So if you were to summarize this whole conversation and give one piece of advice to these ISVs or software companies, what would that advice be?
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: grow and expand your company, your business, your market that you're in.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: The right partner today doesn't just process payments.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: There's so many partners out there that process payments.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: You have to find the partner that's going to protect and help you grow your business alongside of you.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: Find that right partner.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's a hard decision to make to let go of that partner that you've had for a long time.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: But have that upfront, honest, transparent conversation and show them your aspirations and your roadmap of what you want to get to and, if they're not, in your future.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: You have to find the right payments partners.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Look, isvs don't outgrow payments, they outgrow their payment partners.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: So you've got to find the right partner to partner with to ensure that you're getting the right service, the right product, the right technology, and if not, you've got to look elsewhere.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: That'd be the best advice that I can give.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, I think that's great.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: I think it's a great way to wrap up the show.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: So, adam, thank you so much for your time today.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: It's been a great discussion.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate you being here.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: I know your time is very valuable.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you, I appreciate it.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, and one final note before we go.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Coming up in the next episode, as I mentioned, we're going to be doing a deeper dive into the specific ISV program with Con Byrne, who has done many integrations and worked with many partners over the years, so it's going to be another great episode.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: And finally, to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well and until the next story.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us for Powering Payments Together a special series on how Payrock helps ISVs scale smarter.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: To explore more resources and insights, visit https//partnerspayrockcom leaders-in-payments.