Priority Technology’s Sales Machine Kept Humming Even While Payment Volume Plunged 27%

It was a nasty April for Priority Technology Holdings Inc. as the Covid-19 business downturn tightened its grip, but the merchant acquirer is looking to integrated payments and other growth areas to soften the blow.

“In the month of April we processed roughly $2.7 billion in volume, which was down 34% from April 2019, and roughly 27% from March’s volume total,” chief executive Thomas C. Priore said Thursday on Priority’s first-quarter earnings conference call.

Despite that, Alpharetta, Ga.-based Priority boarded 4,486 merchants during the month, close to its usual monthly range of 4,500 to 5,000 new merchants, according to Priore. 

For the quarter ended March 31, Priority processed $10.6 billion in merchant bank card volume, up 2.6% from $10.3 billion in 2019’s first quarter. Revenue grew 10.6% to $96.9 million from $87.6 million. The company posted a net loss of $5.87 million versus the $6.45 million loss a year ago.

First-quarter revenue from Priority’s Integrated Partners segment jumped 129% to $4.53 million. The segment’s biggest business is Priority Real Estate Technology, which is composed of rental-payment processing assets the company acquired last year from YapStone Inc. and RadPad Holdings Inc..

Since Jan. 1, Priority has added 27 new property-management companies representing 37,000 units as clients, according to Priore. Between new property managers and more businesses from existing ones and an increase in consumer usage because of Covid-19, the rental-payment platform has gained 144,000 net new users, he said.

Other growth areas include business-to-business payments, order-ahead services, and the PayRight health-care payment service, according to Priore.