(August 9, 2007) Payment-processing software specialists hoping to find new business through independent sales organizations may have a new way to reach those often-elusive customers. The channel comes in the form of an agreement between Denver-based technology provider IP Commerce Inc. and eProcessing Network LLC, a gateway with links to major payment processors, which integrates their service offerings.

Rather than sell off-the-shelf products, many payment application specialists build customized versions on major platforms, such as the Microsoft Corp. Office Accounting program businesses use to manage their books, and make them available to merchants through merchant acquirers. But, unless they want to tackle the daunting task of writing code for myriad processors, the developers’ customer bases are limited to merchants of those processors and the ISOs employed by the processors. “What holds the ISVs [independent software vendors] back is the lack of connectivity to all the financial institutions,” says Peter Osberg, IP Commerce director of business development.

IP Commerce and Houston-based eProcessing Network say their partnership solves that problem because IP Commerce’s Commerce Toolkit, which is based on open-system architecture, combined with eProcessing Network’s connections to eight major processors, will let developers make applications available to any ISO using eProcessing Network’s gateway. Houston-based eProcessing Network links to eight big processors, including First Data Corp., Total System Services Inc.’s TSYS Acquiring Solutions, Global Payments Inc., U.S. Bancorp’s Nova Information Systems, and others, says company president Steven Sotis. The company has worked with more than 1,000 ISOs in its 11-year history and in any given month gets new merchant customers from about 125, according to Sotis. “We view IP Commerce as another way for merchants to pass transactions to us,” he says.

One software developer looking to expand its business through the partnership is San Jose, Calif.-based Big Software Inc., a 1-year-old firm that has built several customized applications based on Office Accounting. Big Software president Ernest Cook claims his applications give merchants better reporting and research capabilities than are available with the standard Microsoft product. Until now, Big Software’s products, which currently have fewer than 100 users, were available only to merchants using ISOs that processed through Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC and TransFirst LLC. “We want to be able to get to more networks,” Cook tells Digital Transactions News. “The reason we signed up with IP Commerce was to enable the ability to get to any platform, any bank. It could definitely open us up a lot more.” He adds that because of IP Commerce’s open technology, Big Software needed to do “almost no work” in preparing its applications for distribution through eProcessing Network.

EProcessing Network itself is a software developer that provides online shopping carts, online payment terminals, mobile-payment software, and related products, including a so-called plug-in for Intuit Inc.’s popular QuickBooks accounting program for small businesses. The plug-in downloads payment transactions into QuickBooks format. Through IP Commerce, the pool of potential users of the QuickBooks plug-in has widened, according to Sotis. “This opens up the doors for ISOs,” he says.

Besides payment cards, the IP Commerce/eProcessing Network agreement includes payment applications targeted at the fast-growing electronic check conversion market. “There’s a new trend, ISOs are looking to offer ACH services, Check 21 services,” says Osberg.