Latest / Leaders In Payments / Special Series: Powering Payments Together with Conn Byrne, Executive Director, Integrated Payments at Payroc | Episode 432

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Special Series: Powering Payments Together with Conn Byrne, Executive Director, Integrated Payments at Payroc | Episode 432 · 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, and this episode is part of our three-part series titled Powering Payments Together how Payrock Helps ISVs Scale Smarter and obviously is being brought to you by Payrock.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: So in this episode we're going to be going inside the ISV program at Payrock to better understand how they partner and support ISVs.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: In the first episode we talked to Adam Oberman about the big picture of Payrock, where it's headed and how that's going to help ISVs.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: And then in our final episode, we're going to be doing a partner spotlight, where we're going to be going in-depth with a partner to understand how Payrock has helped them overcome integration challenges, find new revenue streams and basically scale smarter and faster.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: But for this episode today, I'm very honored to have with me as our guest Khan Byrne, who is the Executive Director of Integrated Payments at Payrock.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: So, khan, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Hey, greg, thanks for having me Excited for the conversation today.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, me too.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: So before we dive into the meat of it, if you don't mind, let's talk a little bit about you and Payrock.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: So could you walk us through your professional journey and a little bit about yourself?
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's always an interesting question.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: I think no different to most people in payments.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: A lot of people fall into this.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Nobody grows up saying, hey, I want to be a salesperson in payments.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: But it's funny, I actually started off covering a six-week temporary vacation leave for an employee a sales employee in a payment gateway, and 14 years later I'm still in it.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: So I think when I came into it, that was at an Irish-based payment gateway called WorldNet.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: So I came in sales support, moved on to direct merchant sales and we basically found a niche at that point in 2012, plus in the integrated space.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: And, funnily enough, at that point it was still relatively new.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Not everybody could do it and I think the fact that we were a technology-focused gateway, we were quite agnostic, we had a lot of freedom to do pretty cool things and that's kind of where I got into integrated payments first.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: So that took me up to about 2019.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: At that point we decided it was time to try and scale the business.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: European market had got pretty competitive at that point and we saw with the switch to TMV honestly in the US that that presented a very large opportunity for us.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: So 2019, I relocated to the US.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: I was based in Alpharetta, georgia, for just over six years and during that period 2022, we were fortunate enough to become part of the Payrock family.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: So we were acquired April 2022.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: And at that point it kind of led me and all the rest of the WorldNet team honestly to become a core piece of the Payrock family, the Payrock platform, and really take that integrated payment strategy that we had developed at a small scale but take that to the bigger audience and really get supercharged with Payrock.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: So over the last three plus years we've been building on what Payrock had previously done on the integrated side, what we had done as WorldNet, and really we've just been trying to expand our market share and continue to establish Payrock as a market leader in the integrated payment space.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, great.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: So for those in the audience that may not know much about Payrock, do you mind telling us a little bit about Payrock and kind of how Payrock fits into the whole payments ecosystem?
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: So, fundamentally, payrock is a full-service payments platform.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: We specialize in technology-driven solutions that cater to the needs of our partners.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: Our partners vary, so it could be an established, registered ISO, it could be a single agent or a large group of agents, all the way through to individual merchants and integrated partners, and our goal really is to provide technology-driven solutions for all of those subsets or all of those customer bases that allow them to scale to have a payment solution that meets their needs.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Again, whether that's a merchant, an agent, an integrated partner, payment solution that meets their needs, again, whether that's a merchant, an agent, an integrated partner.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: So, Khan, tell us a little bit about your role today and maybe what excites you about the future of payments.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so my role today at Payrock is heavily focused on the lead-to-revenue lifecycle of our integrated partners.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: My team is pretty wide at this stage, but it includes a lot of experienced business development resources who are out there trying to build partnerships and source new integrated partners.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: We also have a team of highly skilled sales engineers and integration engineers to help our partners through integrations and to build out their technology, as well as our most recent addition, which is our go-to-market team.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Go-to-market team is something that we're incredibly excited to have and I think it's a massive differentiator for Payrock as we partner with our integrated partners.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: And what about the future of payments?
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: What excites you about what's going on in our crazy ecosystem?
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is crazy and it changes every day, but I think the thing for me that is most exciting maybe selfishly is the fact that everybody is pushing towards integrated payments and integrated payments is becoming such a big part of what we do.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: I think, if you go below that, we at Payrock have a ton of experience in the unattended space, so that could be kiosk, it could be self-service.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: What Uber taught us is in a lot of cases, people don't like dealing with people, and frictionless payments is the future and I think where we are today at Payrock and where the market is going, we're uniquely positioned to take advantage of that move, especially for the younger generations, to contactless payments, integrated payments and again providing that more frictionless payments experience.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, great.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks for sharing all of that.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Now let's dive into the ISV program, specifically at Payrock, at Payrock, and let's talk about support first, and maybe what we'll do is we'll follow that kind of natural progression of you know, integration, onboarding, enablement, growth.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: So let's kind of think about you know that lifecycle, as we're talking about, you know the next section, so let's start with integration and boarding.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Can you walk us through what that process of integration and onboarding looks like if a partner comes to Payrock for embedded payments?
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, and I think this is one of the things that we really focus on, and over the last two, three years, we've put a lot of resources and thought into how can we improve the experience for an integrated partner as they take payments for the first time or as they migrate from an existing platform.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: So one of the big things that we hear from an integrated partner when they come to Payrock is oh well, I've got this amazing revenue share.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: It's really important to integrated partners that a partnership is not just about commercials, it's not just about an API, it's about the support that's behind that, because it's all well and good to add a payments platform, but if the integration that you choose doesn't suit your needs today or your needs as you grow, the chance of that integration being effective when it comes to satisfying your end merchants, or indeed monetizing payments, are massively reduced, and I think that's something that Payrock is really focused on.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: So if you look at that integration process, we are very open and honest with our partners from day one.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: We will have a deep dive session, technical discovery, with some of those resources that I mentioned earlier.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: We'll make a statement of work.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: We will walk down through every last aspect of what that partner wants from Payrock.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: We'll talk about what Payrock can do today.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: We'll point out things that we can't do and maybe we try and solution around that.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: Solution around that.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: Or we'd be happy to share a roadmap and say, okay, look, we don't have this piece today, but here it is, it's on a roadmap and we expect to have it for you in X amount of months, so allowing the partner to gain that trust.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: We share our expertise.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: We share everything we can about our platform, and what that does is that allows us to make sure the integration is as efficient as possible, as in.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: Not just resources are assigned to it to make sure we get through it quickly, but when you come out the other end, it's the experience and it's the solution that that partner actually wanted.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: And we do that through a number of different ways with my team.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: We will have a dedicated sales engineer and a dedicated integrations engineer.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: They are available throughout the entire integration process.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: As well as that, we'll have a dedicated go-to-market expert.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: That resource is there to try and help get past some of the struggles that any partner who's ever integrated a technology platform is well aware of, and it's just looking at the gotchas.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: It's what are the things that could slow us down today as we integrate, as well as once we go to pilot and exiting that pilot into market?
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: What are the things that could make the experience poor for Payrock or for our partners or indeed their end merchants?
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: So I think, by having a high-touch white-glove approach in the way that we do, as well as a very defined process, we try and take out as many of the gotchas, we take out as many of the unknowns as we can to try and guide that partner through, and I think what we're seeing is where we're getting fantastic feedback from our partners.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: We're actually starting to see repeat customers, if you like, where somebody integrated to us at a previous company, they've now moved on and they're coming back for more, which is always a good sign and I think, ultimately for both Payrock and our partners, we're seeing a dramatically reduced timeframe, not just to get the integration complete, but also to get into market and get to the point where they're delivering revenue and being able to actually correctly monetize payments.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, so let's talk about the white glove.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: You mentioned it.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: It's an important part of your strategy, so maybe explain, when you talk to a partner about your white glove support, what does that mean and why is it so important to them?
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, and I think, depending on where a partner is today, they'll have different reality as to what a payments partner can do.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: But one of the big things that we really focus on is it's putting named people with a partner so that partner will know exactly who their certification engineer is or their sales engineer is, they'll know exactly who their go-to-market partner is and then, once they get through the entire process and go to market, they'll know exactly who their partner manager is and then, once they get through the entire process and go to market, they'll know exactly who their partner manager is.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: So, by having named people who are responsible for each step of the journey, it means that partner never has to worry about okay, where do I go if I have an issue or if I want to try and expand my platform?
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: Who do I talk to about that?
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: There's always going to be one person that they can go to and that person effectively will be one who, who goes behind the scenes to pull together information.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: But it's just that it's that single source of information, a trusted source of information, and again, it's something maybe we take for granted at Payrock a little, but I think when you you look at what's out there in the market.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: Again, some people may say, look, give you a really fantastic revenue, but if you ever need support or if you can't get an API to work, or if you're looking for co-branded marketing and go-to-market initiatives, they just don't exist.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: And again, I think that's why Payrock has positioned ourselves in this area.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: And if you look at where we started, we started as an agent company, so we have thousands of agents with hundreds of thousands of merchants, and we learned how to support those merchants and partners, probably the hard way.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: And what we've done now is we've put on a ton of technology, primarily through acquisitions and building, and we're leveraging that learning that we got from our early days to satisfy those partners.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: And again, that's where we are today, with just this heavily partner-centric, support-focused, integrated process.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Well, let's move on to the growth side.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: So how do you help your partners grow their business?
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think when it comes to growing their business, there's a couple of pieces to it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: So I think first up and we've discussed this already, but I think first up really is that collaborative go-to-market process, so understanding what is important to them, what's important to their customers, what does a successful pilot look like?
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: What warrants exiting a pilot?
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: And then how do we collaborate in that go-to-market to make sure that they can get as many of their merchants using this platform and they can monetize it correctly?
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: So I think that's going to be the first piece.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: For sure, once we get a partner established, that's where our marketing departments, who are massively experienced in the integrated space, that's where they'll come in and they will collaborate with our go-to-market resources.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: They will deal directly with the partners, whether that's attending a vertical specific trade show with them, maybe it's a happy hour or a co-branded event or getting more aggressive with it, where we actually help them convert some of their existing customer base across the payrock and across the integrated solution that they're using.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: So I think there are kind of two ways that we would absolutely go about this.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: I think one of the other ways that we really work with partners and kind of grow with them is by providing a number of different ways for that partner to enter the Payrock ecosystem.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: So if a partner comes to us and they say, look, all I want to do is have payments integrated and I don't want to touch a merchant app or deal with statements or any of that kind of stuff, perfect, a payroll can do that through our referral partnership plan.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: As that ISV grows or as a more established ISV comes in, we've got different paths that they can go with us.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: So you've got everything from referral to our reseller into our managed solution, which is extremely popular at the moment.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: This is kind of your PayFax Lite or managed PayFax style.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: And then we also have Path, and Path is something that I think we're heading in a direction that many others in the market are kind of steering away from.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: Right now, payrock is opening up to either gateway-only solutions or we also support processing only.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: So bring your own gateway, bring your own mid.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: We can do both.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: The goal of Path is to allow a partner to come into the Payrock ecosystem with as little friction as possible.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: Once they're in the platform, we can start to develop those go-to-market ideas.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: We can start to collaborate around marketing and other initiatives, and that's when we get to grow with that partner, truly establish themselves within their vertical.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Okay, so in our last episode we're going to be doing kind of an in-depth case study, but can you give us an example, or maybe a use case or example of a customer that you guys have helped on the ISV side?
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think with this one.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: There's so many different flavors to it.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: There's a few that come to mind.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: There will be a technology-focused play, let's say so.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: There's been partners where they come to us with a very specific technology-driven problem.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: We may not have the solution at that time, but again, through collaboration with our internal resources, our product organization and engineering, we can understand okay, is this something that we can get to pretty quickly here, or is this a no-go?
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: So there's a number of different ISVs that we've worked with over the past few years where we've been able to take a piece of hardware, for example, that we didn't support, certify that piece of hardware onto our platform, integrate the ISV and then have them roll out in some cases 20,000 to 30,000 of those devices in a very short space of time.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: So I think when I look back at some of the big wins that I'm happiest with, when you can go from a call with an ISV that's never heard of you and you've never heard of them, with a piece of hardware that you've never used, to 30,000 devices installed across a city, it's a pretty nice win to have.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a great success story.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: So let's switch gears a little bit and focus on kind of current and future product offerings, as well as the hardware side.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: You mentioned hardware and I think it's an interesting topic that we don't talk about a lot in this space.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: So, if you don't mind, walk us through the current set of products that ISVs can take advantage of with Payrock Sure.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: So I think one of the big directional changes that Payrock has made over the last two years has been in the hardware space.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: We historically would have been more SDK or middleware driven.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Works great, but for a partner to integrate it tends to take some time.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: Also, it's attached to kind of more legacy devices.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: In the last two years we've really ramped up our Payrock Cloud solution and Payrock Cloud basically allows an ISV to leverage our cloud integration methods.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: It's a couple of lines of code to actually take a payment and effectively get up and running and accepting payments, in some cases in a couple of days.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: We're actually there's a running competition within the BDs at the moment to see who can get it done quickest, and I think just under a week is our best so far.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: But once somebody uses that cloud integration method, it's not just about being able to take payments, it's about the flexibility that that offers them in future.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: So we talked earlier about how an ISV can grow a Payrock.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: This is the quickest and easiest way for an ISV to get into our ecosystem.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: It's card present, which is normally the most complex element of it, and I think if you look at our focus over the next couple of years, it's going to be adding more devices, more payment terminals, more payment types to that cloud solution and then also trying to package that up.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: I think early 2026, we're going to see that packaged up as a low-code package or bundle, basically, where any integrated partner will be able to select from a set of devices or CardNotPresent solutions and, assuming they fit into that bucket, they'll be able to integrate to Payrock without ever having any touch points.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: So I think we've done a lot of the groundwork from a technology standpoint.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: I think we understand pretty well what our technology can do and where it benefits partners.
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: What we're trying to do next is take that solution and take that product and push that to market at scale, and that's something we're extremely excited about coming up here.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: So you mentioned something coming in the future, in 2026.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Are there other products or solutions that you want to mention that are coming soon?
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think again back to hardware, and you said earlier, people don't always talk about hardware, but I think for Payrock, it's a big differentiator for us.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: We support 50 plus different payment terminals from four or five major manufacturers, as well as having all of the card not present and omni-channel solutions.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: So, again, that's why we tend to talk about it.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: It's a differentiator.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: I think you can expect to see us continue to add more Android devices that support PayRot Cloud, as well as more solutions for the unattended space.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: So, again, that's an area that we really focus on.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of diversity in that, from indoor solutions to outdoor rated machines that need to work on an EV charger in the middle of the desert somewhere.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I think you can certainly see CS head more in that direction.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: I think one of the other big things that Payrock is going to do within the next year and we're already well into it at this point one of the big focuses for us is going to be on enhancing our API solutions.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: So we have boarding APIs today, we have reporting APIs, we have funding APIs, where we're really pushing on taking that to the next level and pushing out some really incredible tech.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: Honestly, that's going to make it super competitive in that space and, as we deal with ISVs that are further upstream and are maybe leveraging some of these solutions today, it's going to allow us to re-round out our product set and make it easier for them to board merchants on the platform, which is obviously a major pain point, as well as reporting, pulling information from our platform to theirs, and the last piece there around funding.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: So the ability for somebody to split funds, whether that's an ISV taking their percentage SAS fee directly from a payment or potentially paying out residuals or commissions to a hotel that is handling an EV charger, for example.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I think, look for major enhancements to our API suite.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: That's something that we're incredibly excited about.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Okay great.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: So I'd like to double click a little bit on the hardware side because, as we've said, it doesn't get talked about a whole lot in the industry as it relates to integrated payments.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: But can you talk about the role that hardware plays in this space for these ISVs specifically?
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people when you think about ISVs you think it's kind of card, not present, e-commerce kind of thing.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: But hardware plays a role.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: So can you talk about that a little bit more depth?
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, and I think you are right.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: And I think where everybody starts from an integrated payment standpoint is generally with card not present, because it's ultimately the easiest.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: It's easy for everyone to integrate and go to market.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: I think where we differentiate and again the reason that we focus so heavily on hardware is a lot of people can do card not present really well and a lot of people can do card present really well.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: There's very few in the middle there that can actually do card present and card not present through a single platform in the way that we do it.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: So I think that's that's why we focus on it and if you look at the role that hardware plays, again, like payments itself is probably a necessary evil to some people.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: But the payment terminal is where a transaction takes place.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: That's what the cardholder interface is with.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: So without an experience at that payment terminal, without having a payment terminal that can be running every time somebody goes to tap or insert a card, everything falls apart.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: So it's probably the biggest point of friction potentially when it comes to actually taking a card payment.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: When we deal with our integrated partners, it's a huge element for them because they can build whatever technology they want behind the scenes, but if the experience at that terminal doesn't meet the expectations of their cardholder, that cardholder may never come back.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: So I think that's a massive component of what we do and that's why we partner with, as I said earlier, four or five major players in the hardware manufacturing space and I think over the years we've probably become, I'd say, a trusted partner for those hardware manufacturers in the same way they have for us, where we actually collaborate on some large integrated payment solutions, because that trust is there both in terms of our platform as well as their hardware.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Before we leave this section.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: You've talked about the importance of having the holistic solution, but could you maybe double click on that?
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Why is that truly important?
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: And I like to maybe put yourself in the shoes of an ISV.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Right, they have both online and e-commerce and card present.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: They don't have a lot of options to go to, so maybe talk about why that is so important to them to be able to come to a company like Payrock and get that solution.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fantastic question and, again, I think there's probably a lot of ways you can look at it.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: But I think, if we take an example, think of somebody in the car wash vertical where you've got an entry lane where you can come in.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: You pull up to that and it reads your registration plate.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: That reader is looking at a token in the background and that token is tied to your card details.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: So every time you come up to that barrier it opens, it hits your card and away you go.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: Similarly, there's going to be card not present tokenized recurring payments.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: So if you've got a monthly payments plan, every month it hits your card automatically for the fee.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: Every month it hits your card automatically for the fee.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: The other option you're going to see and we do see these for our customers today is the option to actually pay at an unintended card terminal at the point of transaction or, in some cases, on a busy day, somebody will come up with an iPad or similar, with a mobile POS device.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: So I think, if you look at that, that's four very distinct and very different payment solutions and if you can have a partner that can do all of those for you through a single integration, through a single platform, a single backend for reconciliation and billing.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: It's just a huge benefit to that integrated partner.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: Every integration that they have to manage or every gateway integration that they have.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: That's something they need to upkeep and they need to modify every time they make some kind of change on their side.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: Similarly, if a platform decides to change how they work, that ISV now has to deal with them.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: So if you've got one single point of entry, for me that's kind of the holy grail.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: The other piece is there's obviously economies of scale.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: So the more volume you have going through a single platform, you're more likely to get a more competitive set of rates there and I think one of the key things, actually, when we talk about tokenization, again, using that car wash example, if I'm driving across the US, I can pull up to any car wash within that portfolio and it knows who I am straight away because my card is tokenized right across their portfolio rather than being single location.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: So to be able to tap your card to tokenize and then turn up at a car wash on the other side of the country and have the barrier know it's you and open up and take your payment is pretty cool.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that example.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: So for the final section, let's talk a little bit about how you help ISVs scale the resources that you have available and sort of why ISVs stay with Payrock long term.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: So the first question is you and the ISV scale and grow together.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: So can you speak to how you do scale together with the partner?
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, and I think the biggest word that I always come back to for how we scale with the partner is going to be flexibility, and it's not just flexibility on the solutions that we have and again, that's solutions today plus, we're going to keep on acquiring platforms and we're going to keep acquiring tech and keep building tech.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Outside of that, it's the flexibility that we mentioned earlier around those partner programs.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: So, again, we provide as many different paths for somebody to come to Payrock and work with Payrock we put our expertise on them in terms of all the resources that we discussed, by putting experienced go-to-market people there, by putting experienced partner managers there we can actually help that ISV navigate not just the payment space today and the payments market today, but also help them prepare for future.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: We've seen it very recently where a lot of integrated partners are looking to expand.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: They're looking to move outside of the US into Canada or into Europe, Because our platform works across all those regions.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: We've been able to do that and we can actually say in some cases look, you're already integrated to Payrock for the US, You've already got Europe here, let's go.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: And then I think that's when we put our in-market resources on top of it and we will actually work with that partner to define how they go to market in a new country or a new region.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Okay, and what type of partner resources are available to these ISVs?
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: For an ISV, there's a ton of different resources we have, depending on their needs.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: We've got a statement analysis team, which I have no idea how they do it, but within 30 minutes to an hour every time, they come back with a really detailed statement analysis that will show you whether you're going to be above water making money while you make your own customer savings, all the way through to those technical resources where, if you have a problem with your platform or you see a shiny object in terms of a new payment type, a new commerce type or a new region we can be the expert advisors to you.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: These partners trust us for all the reasons that we've discussed so far expert advisors to you.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: These partners trust us for all the reasons that we've discussed so far, and we use that trust and they use that trust to help them build their platform and scale it for the future.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: We do a lot of, I suppose, outreach to our partners.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: We actually had our first ever Payrock Integrated Partner Advisory Council earlier this year, where we brought some of our largest partners together into a room and, rather than saying, look, here's how great, great payrock is, we asked them to tell us how their experience has been and, fortunately enough, actually the experience that they all shared was pretty good.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: But I think the recurring theme that we saw was it was around trust, it was around that flexibility, it was around the journey that those partners have had.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: Many of them started off referring a handful of mids through payrock five, six, seven, ten, seven, 10 years ago in some cases and they've moved all the way through Payrock into being a reseller into our managed solutions, and I think they really appreciate or they gave us the feedback that they appreciate the willingness of Payrock not to shoehorn them into a certain technology or not to shoe them into a certain commercial model or not to restrict them in terms of what gateway they can use or what processor they can use, and that allowed them to kind of build their fundamentals around payments and once they had that base, they were then more comfortable to expand and really make payments part of their growth strategy.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: So you've mentioned it, adam mentioned it.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: A lot of people come to Payrock and build a relationship and stay long term.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: So what do you think it is about the ISV program at Payrock that makes these ISVs want to stay at the long-term?
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: Again, a really good question, and maybe it's our secret sauce or I'm not sure, but I think one of the big things is and again we hear people say this it's I know I can call Adam if I really really need to, or I can call Khan if I need to, or, ideally, I can have four or five named resources that I can get in touch with if I have a problem.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: So I think it is really about accessibility of the right kind of folks within Payrock.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: It's actually the willingness of our team, I think, to get into the weeds with customers and help them if and when they have issues and, again, it's just being that trusted soundboard for the different ideas that these partners have, as well.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: As things don't always go according to plan payments.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: Everybody would be doing it if it was easy.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: So I think it's also how we react when things don't go the right way.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: And I think again, once you get through, whatever initial noise might be there or initial issue is there.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: I think the trust and the partnership that you build through the bad times as well as the good is actually what makes us stronger when it comes to these partnerships.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, con, this has been a great discussion.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Just one final question.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: If there's one key insight or maybe piece of advice that you would like a software leader or an ISV to take away from this conversation, what would that be Again, another really good question.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: I think the biggest thing for me is all partners and all platforms are not created equal.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: You need to look behind the headlines and really just dive deep and figure out is this partner going to do what you need today?
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: Is this partner going to continue to enhance their platform?
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: Do they have the right kinds of support that you need as you scale and, ultimately, are they the right partner to help you add value through monetization and, if you're an ISV, overall to make your company more valuable?
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: So I think they're really the big things.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: It's look behind the headlines, whether that's commercials, apis figure out who the people are, take a look at that roadmap and really don't dive into the decision.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: Make sure you have all the facts before you move forward with an integration and partnership, because it could be one of the most expensive projects that you take on in terms of resources and, if you get it right, it could be one of the things that makes your company more valuable than anything else.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, I think that's a great way to wrap up the show.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: So, con, thank you so much for being here today.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: I know your time is very valuable, so thank you for being on the show.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: No, I really appreciate it.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Greg Really enjoyed the conversation.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: So one final note coming up in our third episode don't want people to miss.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: It is going to be our partner spotlight, where we do that deep dive into a partner to better understand how Payrock has helped them overcome integration challenges, find new revenue at scale smarter and faster.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: So don't miss that episode as well.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: So, finally, to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well and until the next story.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us for Powering Payments Together a special series on how Payrock helps ISVs scale smarter.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: To explore more resources and insights, visit https//partnerspayrockcom leaders-in-payments.