PCM Volume 4 - Issue 1: Subscription Billing

PCM YOUR GATEWAY TO THE WORLD OF PAYMENTS

SUBSCRIPTION BILLING

Vol 4. Issue 1 | February 2018

CONTENTS 2018: A Seminal Year for the Future of Payments?

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Increase Your eCommerce sales with a successful payment page

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access point Financial Poised for Growth

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hot jobs

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industry events

merchants and billing services

BLANKA LIGETI Production Editor & Head of Creative

startup spotlight: commerce signals

blanka@teampcn.com

JESSIE RANDHAWA Editor jessie@teampcn.com

THANKS TO OUR PARTNERS!

PCM is designed by Blanka Ligeti, Payments & Cards Network. Art and photos © Payments & Cards Network, picjumbo.com, Flickr.com and Shutterstock.com, excluding advertisments and company logos.

PCM™ is property of Payments & Cards Network, Herengracht 576, 2nd Fl., 1017 CJ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. All material contained within PCM is the property of Payments & Cards Network. All other product and service names may be trademarks of their respective companies. ©2017 Payments & Cards Network. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any kind is strictly prohibited without express prior written consent of Payments & Cards Network.

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www.payment.jobs www.academy.teampcn.com

2018: A SEMINAL YEAR FOR THE FUTURE OF PAYMENTS?

by Matthias Setzer The payments industry is in a constant state of transformation. Long gone are the days when it was dominated by innovation in cards and terminals.

It is – quite expectedly – now under the influence of digitalisation. Technology companies, fintechs, untraditional currencies and banking models are pushing the drive towards a more sophisticated, decentralised, customer- and security-driven approach in what was once considered a straight-forward industry: payments. This revolution has been hailed as golden among analysts and investors, with its appeal to put security and users at the centre, amid growing consumer demands and expectations.

With so many developments ahead, one would wonder - what’s the ultimate goal of this transformation? Is it to fully digitalise an industry that still runs virtually on cash? Is it to facilitate P2P, P2B or B2B2C payments?

Or is it to simply ensure that eventually, everyone, everywhere, will be able to make and accept payments when (and how) they like? Looking at the latest figures

by The World Bank, the latter presents a massive challenge. It’s almost universal for consumers in highincome economies to have a bank account and use it at least three times a week for online and offline payments (94%). Still, only slightly more than half of all adults in developing economies have access to the same convenience in payments.

With so many important developments unfolding this year, 2018 is shaping up to be a seminal year for the payments and fintech industry. Here’s a look at what’s ahead: Regulations will define the pace This year is all about compliance and requested permission and nowhere is the hype more prevalent so than in Europe.

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While tech giants are taking precautions to ensure they comply with strict new policies, especially as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation comes in effect this May, the payments and fintech industry has its eye on PSD2. As of January 13, 2018, the Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) is in fact in place.

In short, PSD2 mandates the use of open APIs, allowing financial transaction information to be shared with explicit permission from the account holder.

What’s interesting to explore is that PSD2’s mandate carries a hidden opportunity – it’s a chance for banks and traditional financial institutions to co-operate with fintechs, rather than see them as potential threats.

Built with security and customer protection at their core, fintechs have the ability to facilitate the struggles banks have when adapting to PSD2, as they’re already leading the way with the latest security components such as tokenization in place.

Tokenization came to exist as a way to encourage fraud prevention; it’s where payment credentials are tokenized to ensure the uselessness of data should it happen to fall into the wrong hands. One of the ways in which tokenization is already shaping the year is the impact that it has as a fraud reduction measure and the ability it has to improve the user experience. As more consumers make mobile purchases, tokenization enabling one-tap payments is creating a new way to pay online.

It’s All About Customer Experience – It always has been, actually!

Ask any business owner about their main business goal, and they will wholeheartedly say that nothing comes close to ensuring a high level of customer retention.

THOUGHT LEADERS CORNER

No matter the type of merchant – online or offline, B2B or B2C, every business is working on controlling and reducing churn to ensure a stable customer base and predictable cash inflow. This task can become a challenge of massive proportions if the business model of this merchant is based on recurring payments. And why is that?

Recurring payments are a win-win for both sides as they allow consumers to easily and effortlessly plan their expenses, and in return help merchants smooth out their revenue stream and ensure long life-cycles.

Moreover, as reported by The Economist Intelligence Unit, consumer demand for new consumption models – subscriptions, sharing or leasing - is hitting the roof at over 85%. In a world where online purchases for goods and services are dominating, businesses have to find ways to ensure seamless online purchasing experiences. With that in mind, offering recurring payments and subscription options can help lead the way to a necessary change.

Moreover, the advent and uptake of eCommerce also means cross-border sales now represents one of the biggest opportunities available to merchants around the globe. With the accelerating shift to subscription/ new consumption models, companies who want to grow their business or remain leaders in their industries will increasingly explore cross-border opportunities, especially in high-growth markets such as LATAM and India.

A pressing issue to take into consideration is involuntary churn: a worry for any subscription-based business.

What is specific for high growth markets is that when we look into a terminated subscription because of a payment issue in those markets, the problem does not only come in the form of fraud, expired or lost cards.

In some cases, subscriptions could be cancelled and payments could not be going through if the preferred method of payment of customers is not supported by the merchant, resulting in unnecessary cancellation, even if the consumer might still want the product or service.

Merchants should ensure their payment processor can offer a strong solution for subscription business models.

MATTHIAS SETZER Chief Commercial Officer at PayU Matthias joined PayU as the Chief Commercial Officer in October 2016. In this role he is responsible for PayU’s cross-border business, global sales, key accounts, strategic partnerships and marketing & PR. Before joining PayU, he worked with PayPal for over 12 years in various roles, most recently as their Senior Director Strategic Partnerships & Biz Development EMEA, based in Luxembourg.

Matthias holds a Masters degree from WHU in Vallendar, Germany.

PAYU PayU uses its payments heritage and expertise to deliver financial services in emerging markets. Our local operations in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa enable us to be experts in these countries and provide the best solutions for the local market. PayU is the leading online payment service provider in 16 high growth markets, dedicated to creating a fast, simple and efficient payment process for merchants and buyers. Our 250+ payment methods and PCI certified platforms are designed to meet every consumer’s needs. The markets in which PayU operates represent a potential consumer base of nearly 2.3 billion people and a huge growth potential for merchants. PayU has more than 1,800 payment specialists based in these local markets supporting PayU’s 300,000+ merchants and the millions of consumers making online payments.

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What else is on the line?

Mobile payments The growth of mCommerce will also influence the increase of mobile payment methods and wallets. This trend is supported by the increase in consumer habits of using multiple devices in their path-to-purchase – using their desktop when gathering information about a product or service, followed up by an offline visit to a shop, and finalisation of the deal via a mobile app.

Need for Payment Services to Talk to One Another Looking at the rise of mobile payments, we will also see the need for payment services and platforms to communicate to one another in a synced, frictionless way. Use of open, third-party APIs for payments will become a trend, with fintechs, merchants and technology companies collaborating to deliver smooth customer experience.

Blockchain Blockchain has been raised to dizzying heights as predictions claim that the decentralized database will alter technology as we know it.

Moreover, both financial services and payments, two of the most complex and highly regulated industries in the world, are under the strong influence of the developments of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. Distributed ledger technology, first showcased through the Bitcoin cryptocurrency network, has the potential to redefine the complex pipelines that make payments possible. In the coming months, we will certainly see a lot more clashes between banks and DTL technologies in addressing customer needs.

We will also see an increase in use of blockchain technologies for clearing and settlements, as well as seamless, intermediary-free, peer-to-peer transactions that correspond to data privacy requirements.

Conclusion Digitalization is reshaping payments at a rapid pace.

The implications of this changing landscape require a more agile, customer- and data-centred approach.

Whether it is by rethinking the business models to offer more attractive and worry-free payment plans; by complying with regulations that ensure data privacy is top priority, or by building payment systems that correspond with the ways consumers behave, 2018 is shaping up to be the year that puts customers’ specific needs behind the wheel to drive the payments industry.

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THOUGHT LEADERS CORNER

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MERCHANTS AND BILLING SERVICES PCM: What challenges do merchants managing subscription billing have that typical merchants don’t have to face?

Some payment service providers offer tokenization services that allow the merchant to replace the customer data (including card number) by a token.

Roney: In general, merchants that provide subscription billing have to handle challenges like managing failed transactions, keeping customer payment details updated, upgrading and downgrading service packages, handling the combination of discounts of subscriptionbased programs with regular purchases from the same customer, and specially for merchants that operate over multiple locations with different currencies, managing exchange rates and applying the correct price.

By having to store just this token, which is only useful and can only be processed by the payment service provider, the cybersecurity risks the merchant is subject to is significantly reduced. Another example of an interesting solution is the application of risk engines to determine whether or not a subscription service should be interrupted in case of a failed transactions.

If those challenges by themselves were not enough, customer awareness on the importance of online security is constantly increasing. Therefore, whenever storing payment data from a customer, merchants need not only to comply with regulatory requirements, but most importantly, provide such assurance to the consumer as well.

PCM: What are some interesting ways you have seen merchants overcome these challenges?

Roney: The solutions for these challenges can be quite diverse, and they are facilitated by the flexibility that online environment offer.

Sometimes, the solution for these issues can be even facilitated by services that are offered directly by the merchant’s payment service provider.

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In case a credit card is “blocked” and replaced by a new one, the card on file information stored by the merchant will need to be updated. In case the consumer forgets to update this information the recurring payment will fail, what could lead to service interruption.

As service interruption may lead the customer to question the continuation of the subscription, merchants are applying customer scoring techniques to choose whether or not allow the service continuation for a short timeframe to allow the customer to update the card details.

PCM: How does EMVCo tokenisation being offered by the payment networks impact subscription billers?

Roney: The service offered by the schemes can be really helpful to solve the problem I mentioned in the previous question, about outdated card on file details.

Such services enable an issuing bank to inform that the original card number associated with a token needs to be updated. This can significantly reduce the amount of failed transactions due to outdated card on file information, as the tokenized information used for transaction initiation will no longer be linked to a blocked, cancelled or expired card.

EXPERT INTERVIEW

PCM: What are some of the new technologies you see coming up in the new year and how will they change the outlook for subscription billing merchants?

Roney: There’s currently a lot going on in this space, but I believe it may be worth to mention two trends. The first one is 3D Secure 2.0. Although the first version of this protocol is usually associated with some criticism, this new version introduces new features like nonpayment use cases, which could be used for instance for authenticating card on file transactions or enabling card details to be used for future transactions. This authentication layer could represent less risk in this type of transactions which can potentially result in lower transaction fees.

Next to that, the second trend is definitely the new possibilities introduced by PSD2 and the emerging payment initiation services. I expect that these services will pave the way for new methods of enabling subscription or recurring payments with increased customer authentication, oversight and management possibilities on its subscriptions.

RONEY CASTRO Roney Castro is a Principal Consultant at UL’s Transaction Security division. He is responsible for knowledge development within the banking and payments domain and has extensive experience in Payments (EMV, Mobile and Cloud-Based) and Authentication and Identification related technologies such as Biometrics and secure documents.

PCM: Are there any additional trends or themes you are seeing in subscription billing?

Roney: Not directly related to subscription billing, but a trend that will impact this modality of payment is the growing number of connected smart devices and IoT. Merchants will need to be able to manage payments and orders that are triggered not necessarily involving a consumer action.

For instance, smart devices that could detect products reaching their expiration could automatically trigger an order for new items. To manage this, merchants would need to enable a whole new set of features on the customer account level, and set new policies for consumer consent on such transactions. This is necessary as not only new challenges for subscription billing will be introduced, but also the challenges discussed in the previous questions will be amplified.

UL TRANSACTION SECURITY DIVISION UL guides companies through the complex world of electronic transactions. UL is the global leader in safeguarding security, compliance, and global interoperability.

Offering advice, training, compliance and interoperability services, security services, and UL Test Tools, during the full life cycle of your product development process or the implementation of new technologies.

UL’s people proactively collaborate with industry players to define robust standards and policies. Bringing global expertise to your local needs.

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“ WE EXPECT MOST CLIENTS TO SEE IMPROVEMENTS IN SALES LIFT FROM 30%-150%

BY USING COMMERCE SIGNALS AND ACTING ON THE NEAR-REAL TIME INSIGHTS.” PCM: Tell us about Commerce Signals. How did this idea come to be?

sales. Our speed enables merchants to optimize their digital media campaigns mid-flight to drive more sales.

Thomas Noyes, the founder of Commerce Signals, recognized that banks had incredibly powerful consumer behavior data in payments, but did not have a controlled and privacy centric way to share that data back with their merchants.

PCM: What were some of your biggest challenges for launching this business?

PCM: Why is it called Commerce Signals?

We leverage aggregate payment data to help retailers and restaurants know if their marketing is driving incremental sales.

The payment data (Commerce) is the signal to the merchant that their marketing is working or where improvement is possible.

PCM: Why is Commerce Signals needed?

Many marketers still measure the success of digital marketing campaigns with sales proxies such as clicks, impressions, likes and views because understanding the impact on offline sales is too slow and complex.

Commerce Signals solves this problem.

In near-real time, we help merchants know if their advertising is working so they can optimize it to drive more sales.

PCM: What makes Commerce Signals different?

With under 72-hour response time, we are the fastest way to measure digital advertising’s impact on in-store

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We have built a unique set of data relationships with the world’s leading payment pro-viders and banks that provide 70% coverage of US purchase transactions.

For a host of privacy and reputational reasons, these data partners have tight controls on how their data is used.

We’ve done the hard work of developing a patented, privacy centric model with the necessary controls that enable delivering near-real time insights through our self-service tool.

This allows a new client to be up and running with Commerce Signals in just a week or two rather than spend years working through all the legal and IT complex-ities themselves.

PCM: Tell us about your expansion plans and how you go about choosing the next region you expand into?

The U.S. is our current biggest priority, but we will enter new geographies as customer needs dictate.

PCM: What are the 3 things you want people to know about your company?

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STARTUP SPOTLIGHT

We are the fastest way to know if your digital

marketing is working to drive in-store sales (2) By knowing faster, you can take action to improve sales of each and every campaign (3) We expect most clients to see improvements in sales lift from 30%-150% by using Commerce Signals and acting on the near-real time insights.

PCM: Any exciting news / announcements you would like to share?

We recently hired four new executives to help meet and exceed client expectations. You can read more about them here.

TOM NOYES Founder and CEO of Commerce Signals Recognized as one of the Top 25 Innovators in Financial Services, Tom Noyes is also the founder and CEO of Commerce Signals.

Tom’s resume includes roles with NASA, Citigroup, 41st Parameter and Starpoint LLP, where his team worked with Google, Amazon, Amex, Verizon, Mastercard and more.

COMMERCE SIGNALS Commerce Signals connects advertisers and publishers directly with near-real-time insights from financial institutions.

Advertisers use these insights to optimize media tactics and measure the incremental crosschannel sales driven by their advertising.

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INCREASE YOUR ECOMMERCE SALES WITH A SUCCESSFUL PAYMENT PAGE The success of your online shop depends on many different factors. As an online retailer, you certainly know, that beautiful images and informative product descriptions must convince the customer; even a clear and cleverly designed customer journey through your store ensures that your clients feel comfortable and are pleased to return.

Therefore, it is more than important to make the entire payment process transparent and user-friendly too. With a user-friendly payment page, you can reduce unnecessary purchase breaks and increase your conversion rate instead.

On top, you offer your customers a pleasant shopping experience and provide them with a convincing reason to return or recommend you to their friends. Check out the following blog post to help you build your perfect payment page.

Offer different payment options Adapt to the payment habits of your customers. Most online shoppers have preferred payment methods that make them feel safe. Some people prefer SEPA Direct Debit; others choose payment by credit card, again others swear by PayPal or Sofort Ăœberweisung. Whatever the most popular payment methods for your customers is - you should know it and offer them some options to choose from. To get more informations on this, check out this article.

The must-have attributes of your payment page Your payment page should make the entire payment process as transparent as possible. This includes a clear summary of the articles, simple indications of their prices, the total sum and currency, as well as understandable information on shipping costs and shipping method. If the payment page displays your company logo, this creates additional confidence. Always keep it in the back of your mind: the easier and more understandable the page is, the faster your customer will complete the purchase.

Show the customer all the information he needs to have In the payment details, you should always use the current original logos of the payment providers, which also creates trust on the customer‘s site. Please also take the chance to inform your customers about your terms of cancellation, return and shipping as well as about your general terms and conditions and data protection regulations. Find out here what information you should provide on these pages. Maximum transparency and customer friendliness are a success guarantee for your purchase transactions.

Therefore, please give your customer especially at this point all the information he needs to complete the payment process with a good feeling.

What should an ideal payment page look like?

For online payments, it is important to gain your customers trust. This includes for example that you do not redirect them to external pages during payment processing but integrate the payment page in your shop instead. For this, you can be supported by a payment service provider such as PAYMILL.

Lower your chargeback rate What are the benefits of all your successful sales deals when you have to retreat later on high rates of chargebacks? In the first step, it is certainly important that you as an online trader carry out a solid chargeback monitoring and analyze their reasons. When analyzing your chargebacks, you can, for example, get support by your payment service provider to help you eliminate market segments where chargebacks are particularly common.

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PAYMENT COLLECTIVE

Provide a reliable 24/7 support for your customers, to make sure they can contact you directly with any questions about the product, the method of payment and the shipping status, and not contact the bank. If you see a high rate of repayment in the medium to long term, the credit card institution can impose higher transaction fees or even refuse permission to offer card payments.

Your eCommerce stands and falls with a good support To avoid such an annoying situation, you should meet your customers with an excellent support and make this service clearly visible on your payment page. In case of dissatisfaction on your customers site, you have the chance to offer a compensation on the telephone - and thus avoid bad evaluations in the social media.

Display security standards A frequent reason for chargebacks is fraud. Therefore, when choosing your payment service provider, make sure that it has the highest level of fraud protection.

This includes matching of the transaction data with a global blacklist or the verification of the BIN (Bank Identification Number).When using Visa and MasterCard, you can introduce additional protection measures.

With 3D Secure, make sure that your customer is the legal owner of the card. This is how you lower your chargebacks and offer your honest customers optimal protection. These security measures should be presented in the form of certificates on your payment page. This is how you create confidence in your valued customers and scare fraudsters.

LENA SEYDAACK Head of Marketing at PAYMILL She is responsible for marketing since 2016.

She brings years of experience in the field of content marketing. She has built up the content strategy for CANCOM as a team lead and advised as a free consultant B2B companies in Online Communications.

These security measures should be presented in the form of certificates on your payment page. This is how you create confidence in your valued customers and scare fraudsters.

Summary Now, you have got the right information to set up your successful payment page. In the following I summarize the most important benefits for you, which you will receive with your perfectly designed payment page: • You create transparency and trust with your customers; • You increase your conversion rate, and so do your purchase deals; • You reduce your return rate and thus achieve a more sustainable business; • You get the reputation, and will be recommended. I wish you much success!

PAYMILL PAYMILL is one of the top payment processing companies in Europe. PAYMILL will allow you to accept PayPal and credit/debit card payments directly in your online shop. You will be able to accept mobile payments, recurring payments and online payments globally, enabling you to scale internationally from the get-go. PAYMILL was founded in 2012 and has been part of the CYBERservices SA Group since 2016. Further information at www.paymill.com

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ACCESS POINT FINANCIAL POISED FOR GROWTH by robert green On October 5th, Atlanta based hotel lender Access Point Financial, Inc. (APF) announced the recapitalization of the company in a transaction led by WPC Investments (WCPI). The recap saw the successful exit of Stone Point Capital from the business in a $350 million transaction.

The new investor has also committed to facilitate further expansion of the company. “We are excited to gain exposure to this unique asset class,” said WCPI’s Chief Investment Officer Michael Gontar, “and are looking forward to continuing the tremendous growth that APF has achieved since its founding.”

Commenting on the transaction, Jon S. Wright, APF’s chairman and CEO, said, “We are delighted with the success we have achieved since our initial capitalization in 2011 and will now move to grow the platform to even greater heights with WCPI as our financial partner.

The APF management team will be forever grateful to Chuck Davis and his investment team at Stone Point for their forward-looking and pioneering rational when earmarking the initial 2011 investment. Our new partners at WCPI share our passion for integrity as well as verifiable results driven by operating partners with a 25 year track record of risk adjusted returns.”

The successful transaction was another in a series of wins for Wright and his team - the result of hard work that began attracting notice some time ago. Last year, when Wright first learned his company had been named the 17th fastest growing private company in the country for 2015, by Inc. magazine, he was both humbled and gratified for the honor. “It’s extremely important to me that the management team receives the recognition that they deserve when such well-regarded counterparty assessment as Inc. Magazine determines such results,” he said.

Born and raised in the college town of Fayetteville, Arkansas, Wright was one of two sons of post grad educators (Library Science and Musician). “My mother

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earned a Masters in Library Science, after herding my brother and me to lower school, and my father was a brilliant musician who taught music in the high school, church and University of Arkansas,” he said “Growing up, my entire existence consisted of sports, music and church.” His father handed him a guitar at age fifteen, informing him that, “the gals will be able to see you better without that helmet on your head,” (after suffering a spinal injury, which ended his football aspirations). He now likes to live vicariously through his son, Luke, who is currently a quarterback for the University of Kentucky and his daughter, Kate, “who sings like an angel and is academically light-years ahead of my GPA down the road at the University of Alabama.”

As a pre-teen, Wright worked as a vendor at Razorback Stadium on game days selling Cokes and kept a steady lawn care business which was his means to pay for his first car. During high school and college he worked at the local mall from 5:00pm – 9:00pm. “I knew one day I wanted to run my own business, and in order to get ahead, I would have to work harder than others to The break up actually inspired him to write a country song, “Going through the Big D” (Don’t Mean Dallas).”

Wright’s brother, Mark, co-wrote the song and produced it with Mark Chestnutt recording it. The song went to number two on the Billboard Country chart and number one on Radio and Records Charting Service. “While it was very satisfying to write a hit song, it also helped me impress my future wife, Paige.” Now married for 23 years, Wright shared, “We met at a hotel convention.

She was similarly employed by a specialty lender based in Dallas. She knew the business and the key players very well. And although Paige hung her ‘cleats” up to raise our children, I still continue to lean on her expertise daily to provide HR feedback, which as any businessman understands can clearly benefit mental well-being as a sounding board.

EXECUTIVE PROFILES

JON S. WRIGHT Chairman and CEO

accomplish those goals.” At Sears, he was soon promoted to the electronic and automotive departments, where he was compensated primarily by commission on gross sales. He was mesmerized by the fact his income had surpassed that of most recent college graduates or those serving the public sector, (part-time no doubt).

For college, Wright decided to remain in Fayetteville and attend the University of Arkansas. He joined the Sigma Nu fraternity. “I liked the idea of joining a fraternity and instantly meeting roughly a hundred new frat brothers, but unfortunately, couldn’t afford the full tab or so I thought. My parents termed it ‘Sigma Sin’ and made sure I was aware that all financial obligations were on my shoulders. A couple of the older brothers/ officers suggested that I work part time to help with the landscaping for relief of monthly dues. I mowed the lawn and assisted the gardening crews for two years while also maintaining my 5:00-9:00 shift at Sears,” said Wright, “more importantly, I swallowed a lot of pride.”

After college, Jon accepted an offer from Pitney Bowes, where he worked in its sales and finance division, followed by corporate real estate and ABS financing for Ford’s commercial ABS leasing division. In 1988, he was recruited to Holiday Inn Worldwide in Memphis to work for its Real Estate financing arm.

“Fortuitous timing for me, indeed, launched my career in commercial real estate and specifically the hotel financing business. I was blessed to meet the first generation of hotel developers. Most of them were in their sunset years, and were in the process of successfully passing their investments to the next generation. I got to know them intently and learned a lot from them.” What was most surprising to Jon was how easily he got along with these businessmen away from the nuts & bolts of business.

Jon Wright, a 25-plus year veteran of commercial real estate and hospitality finance, began his career with Ford Motor Credit’s CRE and ABS division. He joined Holiday Inn Worldwide (today known as InterContinental Hotels Group, “IHG”) where he managed the company’s finance subsidiary and strategically facilitated franchisee growth and quality across all IHG brands via senior and sub debt origination and syndication.

ACCESS POINT Access Point Financial (APF) is a direct lender focused on the hospitality industry. We offer a full-service lending and advisory platform that provides financing to qualified hotel franchisees of all major brands and independent boutique hotels throughout the United States and Canada.

APF’s extensive experience in hotel bridge financing, mortgage and CapEx lending, combined with our consistent track record makes APF the leader in this specialty finance sector. Our executive team has more than 100 years of combined hotel financing experience and has worked together for more than 10 years to establish an excellent reputation and strong performance history.

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“We got along splendidly. A lot of them had garageband mentalities, working hard to do just that little bit more to impress the audience. They had amazing passion for work and family.”

At that point in time, UK-based Bass PLC (Bass Ale) bought Holiday Inn brands and kept the financing arm that he eventually led (whilst Bass promptly moved the company to Atlanta in 1990.) Thus Wright moved to Atlanta with his then girlfriend and found that he loved Buckhead/Atlanta more than a committed relationship.

In 1997, Wright was recruited to leave Holiday Inn to launch a new hotel financing unit for GMAC. He was recruited by one of the top finance managers at GM, who was a mentor then and is still today as well as a current Board Member.

Now he could make loans to the entire hotel industry and not just Holiday Inn hotels. He would be starting from scratch and taking a fifty percent pay cut. But he had great upside potential as a Junior partner if the new venture was successful growing to $4 billion of assets. “And we were successful,” he stated.

In 2005, GM found itself in financial trouble and Wright ended up selling his division at a profit, yet after a fantastic four year stint and roughly $2 billion of loans, the parent bank had problems of its own, ended up being closed and placed in receivership by the FDIC in 2009. Wright’s unit, though still highly profitable, was now owned by the FDIC and remained open and operational for the next two years. Wright found an entity that would buy his unit from the receivership for a premium when the parent company shuttered, however, “the FDIC was a tad bureaucratic, to say the least,” and could not get the FDIC to act fast enough on a stellar Wall Street proposal. Two years later, Blackstone bought the bulk of the unit’s assets for eighty-two cents on the dollar, which he says was still the highest value obtained by the FDIC for the bulk sale of assets in receivership.

By 2011, Wright exited the receivership entity owned by the FDIC and formulated his next steps. The big decision that he had to make was whether or not to start all over again. He was very fortunate that his corporate insurance coverage was in force and available from his insurer. He never had a lender liability claim in all his years in business – but to keep his policies in effect he would have to pay the six figure premium out of pocket. “I knew without a doubt that our team was the best in our space” he said, “so it ended up being one of those hard decisions that was easy to make. I covered the premium, subsequent start-up costs and overhead out of my own pocket and got back to work sourcing recapitalization via the Private Equity Funding.”Wright closed the recap with a well-regarded private equity firm (Stone Point Capital) for funding the enterprise within forty-five days, initially utilizing $50 million of the overall commitment of $250 million and Access Point Financial was born. He rented office space for the team and bought furniture from the FDIC for ten cents on the dollar.

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“I told the landlord to leave our space ‘as is’. We were ready to go, and I had a great management team in place.

My CFO, COO and the balance of the management team had been with me for over a dozen years, long enough to know they were passionate to keep moving forward as well.” “Our biggest milestone came when I was able to tell the team that we had broken even and then in the black making a profit of $100,000 for the month. We celebrated briefly and immediately got back to work,” Wright said. “The profits each month continued to mount, and in 2016 Access Pointearned record revenues.

That’s why we had such a high ranking on the Inc. 500 magazine list I suppose.” In five years, the company has lent on 550 assets (with $3.5 billion in asset valuation) and has combined debt/equity of more than $1 billion. Access Point makes hotel loans that range from $250,000-$25 million. It makes bridge loans with capital improvements included.

The company’s expertise makes the loans they originate quite liquid since they are so well respected in the financial market place. “One thing that I’m very proud of is that we recently produced the first hotel only asset backed security and is ’A’ rated by two agencies. We have a stable of well-regarded Investors who appreciate the quality, velocity and integrity of our product delivery and the fact we remain as principal in all executions.” APF issued “A” rated securities and increased its stable of bank leverage partners to include JP Morgan, Key Bank, East West Bank and several other world class banks.Due to their success, (which Wright always credits to his management team) banks are especially interested in APF because its loyal customer rapport of high net worth. Cross-selling financial products to such individuals is very important to banks today, so at least one path to a major liquidity event is clear for the company.

When time came for the recap, Wright and his team first analysed a list of 100 investment banks, then narrowed it down to a list of 20 to meet in person. Early on, WCP seemed like a good fit.

“They had already been doing some specialty lending,” said Wright, “and they made clear that they would take an autonomous approach to management. It also helped that they liked our innovative lending efforts.” The company will have a lending budget of more than $6 billion over the next three years. “This transaction provides a platform for us to grow in the future,” said Wright. “We may start doing SBA lending. We will also look at additional asset classes.

However, whatever we do will stay within the confines of our current client universe – our hotel owning customers.”

“Most important of all, we will continue to have a high touch client experience.”

EXECUTIVE PROFILES

Hot Jobs SENIOR SALES MANAGER INTERNATIONAL

amsterdam nl

COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR

amsterdam nl

LEAD RECRUITMENT CONSULTANT

amsterdam nl

PAYMENTS EXPERT \ CONSULTANT PSD2

luxembourg luxemburg

COMPLIANCE OFFICER

paris fr

KEY ACCOUNT MANAGER

paris fr

COMPLIANCE & CONTROLS MANAGER

ATLANTA US

SENIOR BUSINESS DEVELOPER

atlanta us

SENIOR RECRUITER \ ACCOUNT MANAGER

Atlanta us

SYSTEMS, QUALITY AND SECURITY ENGINEER

berlin ge

PRODUCT MANAGER PAYMENTS

atlanta us

SECURITY ENGINEER

HAMBURG DE

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These are the latest job opportunities we have available!

For more information please visit www.teampcn.com/jobs or check out our international Job Board at www.payment.jobs

events LONDON, UK

MARCH

13-14

The Center for Financial Professionals invite you to attend New Generation Operational Risk: Europe, a two-day conference featuring two individual work streams, interactive discussions and presentations from over 30 senior OpRisk professionals. You and your colleagues can gain valuable insights from the Financial Conduct Authority, HSBC, Mizuho International, Erste Group, Prudential, UBS, Credit Suisse, Barclays, Credit Suisse, RBS, Lloyds Banking Group and more.

Palm Springs, CA

26th feb 1st march

eTail West 2018 is where the top minds in retail meet, collaborate and learn about what’s disrupting the industry today and what’ll change tomorrow. Designed to build your business and your profit, we cut out the fluff and provide you with content from retail innovators in the trenches. Arrive as an attendee, and leave as part of the community. eTail takes the boringness out of networking and provides you with the fun stuff. California wine country tastings? Private chef tastings? Acrobatics? We got it all - infamous receptions that you don’t want to miss. We’re located in beautiful Southern California in Palm Springs. Surrounded by modern architecture, spas and world class golf courses, eTail is held at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa.

Paris, Dubai,France UAE

march

5-6

The second edition of Finsec–The Banking Security Summit will bring together leading decision makers and solution providers to share case studies and address key challenges.

Information security professionals will have the opportunity to discover the latest technologies, developments and strategies to protect their organisations against cybercrime. The summit will guide organisations on how to make comprehensive security decisions that will define their bank’s future.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

march

19-22

30

Asia’s Foremost Banking Conference for SME Banking with Demanded Focus on NonCollateral Lending, Targeting Untapped Opportunities and Products & Services Development!

Featuring Award-Winning SME Banks across South East Asia, Middle East and East Asia, the 3rd Annual SME Banking Asia Summit 2018 will focus on Unsecured SME Financing for Banks across Asia in 2018.

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