Forging ahead
In Q3, 2018, it was revealed that Payment Club, a subscription-based payment service provider, completed a $7 Million dollar financing round in partnership with a well-known subsidiary of Net Element called Unified Payment. Although the full details of this venture are not yet explicitly revealed, this latest move is advantageous to both payment processing and value-added point-of-sale sector.
According to various reports, the financing round was primarily led by the company’s co-founders, along with $2 Million in equities. As part of the partnership through the implementation of the policies of the Unified Prosperity Financing program, Unified Payment arranged for an additional $5 Million credit facility for Payment Club in the initial stages. This increased the total amount of debt and equity financing to a handsome $7 million in total.
Who’s who
Net Element, the parent company of Unified Payment, is primarily a “payment-as-a-service” platform, offering fully compliant transactional and value-added services platform to its users. Based in the US, the company focuses heavily on small to medium enterprises. They aim to grow transactional revenue, innovating existing SME productivity services through blockchain integration. The company already has an operational cloud-based retail point of sale solution called Aptito.
On the international stage, Net Element aims to leverage its own omni-channel platform to deliver flexible offerings to the emerging markets which are plagued by diverse banking, demographic, and regulatory restrictions. The company has quite an international presence, ranking as one of the fastest growing companies in North America by a 2017 Deloitte Technology report.
As mentioned earlier, Payment Club is a subscription-based payments provider that offers a myriad of membership plans for accessing value added services, POS, and Flat fee payment acceptance. The company stresses the need for a high level of transparency and zero markup pricing. With a combined team experience of over ten years in the industry, they deftly navigate the overly competitive and demanding modern payment industry.
The Partnership
The partnership aims to use the technical resources and expertise laid out by Payment Club co-founders Anthony Kutscher and Alex Ilinski. They have a combined industry experience exceeding 20 years and have been assisting small to medium size merchants by introducing them to modern and emerging payment technologies. Alex Ilinski comments, “Having witnessed our model deliver exceptional outcomes and drive demand, we knew we needed to partner with the reliable technology provider and raise capital to reach more clients faster.”
The global subscription business model has grown exponentially in recent years, as indicated by independent reports from Zuora’s Subscription Economy Index 2017. The total number of companies offering a subscription based service are believed to be somewhere around 28,000. According to Anthony Kutscher, by “[u]tilizing a transparent subscription-based pricing model combined with the latest technology solutions, Payment Club can provide positive options to frustrated merchants and streamline their payment processes,”
As the world moves towards a cashless transactional economy, a long-term partnership between the two companies is expected to be a revolutionary way for merchants to accept cashless transactions. If everything is implemented correctly, it is believed that the partnership will use the funding appropriately to expand nationwide and hire up to 100 Payment Club membership advisors. They also have plans to create showrooms where business owners can come in and experience the products, getting information on a variety of memberships the Payment Club plans to offer.
