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Introduction

247Payments is an independent sales organization (ISO) based in Tampa, Florida. It offers merchants in verticals like retail, dining, high-risk sales and professional services a full suite of merchant services. Its offerings include processing, point-of-sale hardware, payment gateways, ecommerce payments and mobile solutions. 

As a rapidly growing company, 247Payments came to NMI wanting to streamline and unify its backend processes. Its goal was to enable its managing partners, administrative team and 12 independent agents to maximize the company’s time and resources as it expanded into new markets and pursued new opportunities.

Technical Challenges

On the technical side, 247Payments was experiencing two key challenges. By fusing multiple software systems into something cohesive, they encountered user friction and integration issues.

User Friction

With multiple processing partners and a growing roster of sub-agents, every additional system 247Payments used added friction. That slowed down processes, increased costs and introduced unnecessary training burdens.

“On top of multiple CRMs, we were giving our agents sub-portal logins for the places we send deals to, which meant they had to manage four different logins and learn four different systems,” said Tenore. “That made their jobs harder. The time they spent wrangling bank and processor portals was time they weren’t spending on landing deals. That’s not good for them as salespeople, and it’s not good for us as a business.”

Integration Issues

Software companies rarely develop tools that are compatible with their competitors’ systems. The CRMs 247Payments used weren’t designed to work together cohesively, making workflows unnecessarily disjointed and complex. 

For 247Payments to develop an internal application portal, it needed to integrate onboarding and merchant management tools with custom code using application program interfaces (APIs). More unique systems meant more APIs and trickier integrations, adding unnecessary complexity and cost for the 247Payments team.

A Centralized, Frictionless, Payments-First Experience

With Merchant Central and its built-in automated onboarding tool, TurboApp, 247Payments was able to replace multiple CRMs and processor boarding portals with a central, more efficient, solution.

“The agents use it for lead management, sales and tracking their residuals. On the management side, we also use it extensively for marketing; we can send deals directly to our processing partners in a matter of minutes,” Tenore said. “It’s amazing to have one platform that enables people at every level of our company. It’s a single log-in that does everything, and that’s been invaluable for us.”

Merchant Central was designed by payments professionals for payments professionals. Its unique structure makes it easy to learn and intuitive, leading to rapid buy-in from the 247Payments team. 

“It took about a month before we were using Merchant Central to its full potential across the whole company,” said Tenore. “It’s a huge leap forward, especially for the agents who no longer have to worry about learning to use half a dozen systems. But beyond being easy, it’s hard to overstate the utility of having a CRM designed specifically to help sell payments and get merchants spun up. Generalist systems just can’t compare.”

Easy Integration and Industry-Best Support

Switching to a new CRM can be frustrating and drawn-out. That wasn’t the case with 247Payments and Merchant Central. NMI’s expert integrations team designed a plan tailored to 247Payments’ needs and existing workflows, ensuring the transition was simple and nondisruptive

“It was very seamless,” said Tenore. “The rollout plan the NMI team came up with was great. Our primary implementation manager was amazing, but there was a whole team of specialists to get us up and running quickly with things like residuals reporting and the PDF mapping for digital signups.

“Within a few weeks, we were using it like crazy. And keep in mind this is while we’re still doing in-house development on our internal portal on top of our normal operations. Needless to say, we were busy. But the switchover wasn’t an issue. That’s a testament to how frictionless the NMI team made everything.”

The Result

Merchant Central’s industry-specific nature and expansive features freed 247Payments from the headaches and limitations of multiple generic CRMs. It also streamlined and automated the onboarding process, enabling the sales team to retrieve signed agreements and submit merchants for approval significantly faster.

“We pride ourselves on easy signup and fast time-to-processing because those are both very important to modern merchants,” said Tenore. “The standard we strive for is two business days from signup to approval, and Merchant Central’s forms and automated onboarding have helped us deliver that quick turnaround to our merchants. Ultimately, the processor is often the bottleneck, but getting applications to them faster is key to getting faster approvals.”

In addition to faster time-to-processing, Merchant Central also sped up key workflows, covering everyone from the C-suite to frontline agents. By enabling staff to automate and streamline the most repetitive and time-consuming parts of their jobs, Merchant Central freed up more time for the 247Payments team to focus on what they do best — providing great merchant service.

The Future

After a successful transition to Merchant Central, 247Payments is focusing on integrating the system with its new internal portal. That will further expand the value of the company’s entire tech stack. 247Payments is also considering NMI’s automated underwriting tools — ScanX and MonitorX — to meet its future needs for enhanced due diligence. As opportunities in the payments space grow, 247Payments has the modernized CRM system it needs to scale and grow with the market.