7 Minutes with Greg Cohen

 

Channel Partners Online

Sage Payment Solutions, a provider of payment processing and business offerings in North America, Tuesday entered a new chapter rebranded under the name of Paya.

The company said the new corporate name signals a “tectonic shift” in its vision and strategy in the financial technology market.

“The Paya name represents the fresh and progressive company we are building for our employees, partners and customers as we work to become the foremost technology platform helping companies run their businesses better,” said Joe Kaplan, Paya’s CEO

Paya also has increased its investment to expand and grow its channel partner program with new tools and assets aimed at helping to attract, bring value to and monetize new and existing opportunities. Paya’s partner program targets participation from technology providers, referral organizations and ISOs.

Paya said its platform helps businesses get paid, make payments and manage their money. In August 2017, Paya was divested from former parent company Sage Software to private equity firm GTCR, and since that time, it has enhanced its executive team with the addition of industry veterans who have helped create a new strategic direction in the company’s transformation.

We asked Greg Cohen, Paya’s president, to give us the scoop on what his company has to offer the channel.

Channel Partners: Tell us what customers love about your product or service. What’s the secret selling sauce?

Greg Cohen: Customers love the fact that we are solution oriented and that we easily can adapt or retrofit our capabilities into their unique environments. Paya also understands the complexities that merchants face with cross-channel payment types, as well as the complexity of data post back and reconciliation. Paya continues to focus on continually offering new APIs and is vastly more integrated across various cloud-based solutions. Our technology will also be more modular and adaptive, which allows us to quickly plug into new and existing systems, whether they are POS, payment terminals, data environments or ERP solutions.

CP: Describe your channel program — metal levels, heavy on certifications, open or selective, unique features?

GC: Paya is a technology company providing a highly-compatible platform designed to integrate effortlessly with a wide variety of new and existing systems. Paya’s enhanced partner program gives members the tools to attract and win new customers through a referral or a reseller partnership. Paya offers end users a seamless, simple, frictionless technology that provides ease of integration and a full spectrum technology-enabled platform with a simple and easy onboarding experience. With real-time analytics to drive business intelligence and accelerate growth, Paya’s substantial data capabilities help our partners build a smarter, streamlined and efficient program for customers. Our technology provides high-level encryption and advanced fraud detection with reliability and fail-safe redundancies. As a referral partner, Paya provides the necessary tools to drive revenue successfully. Reseller partners benefit from Paya’s technology to build their businesses with our seamless technology solutions.

 

CP: Quick-hit answers: Percentage of sales through the channel, number of partners, average margin.

GC: Three channels: ISO, ISV, services. ISO: percentage of sales, 28 percent; 431 partners. ISV: percentage of sales, 41 percent; 501 partners. Services: percentage of sales, 25 percent; 325 partners.

Why Paya’s offering is better: unlike other solutions that offer a complex and fragmented set of technologies, Paya delivers a purpose-built solutions platform that works to reduce complexity and increase business intelligence, ensuring that companies can confidently and quickly adapt to changes in technology and in the marketplace.

CP: How do you think your technology portfolio will change in the next three years?

GC: Our technology will become smarter, and will allow both administrators and business owners to quantify their decisions better, as our data pool grows and becomes more accommodating.

CP: How do you expect your channel strategy to evolve over that time frame?

GC: Over the next few years, our channel strategy will migrate from transaction enablement and partner experience to deep customer engagement. Today, we are approaching partners with the tools necessary to create deeply embedded payments experiences for their clients. Paya is also providing integrated partner-facing tools that touch the developer through the channel owner and even the service organization. With that strong foundation, the future of our program will be a collaborative (mutually developed) solution set around, not just payments, but data, analytics and meaningful client experiences.

CP: What didn’t we ask that partners should know?

GC: Partners should know that Paya reworked and enhanced its partner program to provide partners with the tools necessary to grow their businesses. Paya built its new partner portal with partner success in mind, and houses selling tools and marketing materials that can be adopted and used to drive success. Our program will always be looking toward the future, and will continuously be evolving — offering new programs, insights, tools and data to drive partner success.