Usio Profile
Usio, Inc. (Usio) provides integrated payment processing services to merchants and businesses, including all types of automated clearing house (ACH) processing, credit, prepaid card and debit card-based processing services.
The company offers customizable prepaid cards companies use for expense management, incentives, refunds, claims and disbursements, unique forms of compensation like per diems, and more. The company also offers prepaid cards to consumers for use as a tool to stay on budget, manage allowances and share money with family and friends. Usio's Card platform supports Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Google Pay. The company’s PIN-less debit product allows merchants to debit and credit accounts in real-time. In its over 20-year history, the company has created a loyal customer base that relies on it for its convenient, secure, innovative and adaptive services and technology, and the company has built long-standing and valuable relationships with premier banking institutions such as Fifth-Third Bank, Sunrise Bank, and Wells Fargo Bank.
Through its Akimbo Now technology the company offers a comprehensive money disbursement platform that allows businesses to pay their contractors, employees, or other recipients by choosing between a prepaid debit Mastercard, real-time deposit to a checking account, traditional ACH, direct deposit or paper check.
With the acquisition of the assets of Information Management Solutions, LLC, or IMS, in December 2020, the company also offers additional services relating to electronic bill presentment, document composition, document decomposition and printing and mailing services serving hundreds of customers representing a wide range of industry verticals, including utilities and financial institutions. This product offering provides an outsourced solution for document design, print and electronic delivery to potential customers and entities looking to reduce postage costs and increase efficiencies.
The ACH network is a nationwide electronic funds transfer system that is regulated by the Federal Reserve and the National Automatic Clearing House Association, or NACHA, the electronic payments association, and provides for the clearing of electronic payments between participating financial institutions. The company’s ACH processing services enable merchants or businesses to both disburse and collect funds electronically using e-checks instead of traditional paper checks. An e-check is an electronic debit to a bank checking account that is initiated at the point-of-sale, on the Internet, over the telephone, or via a bill payment sent through the mail via a physical check. E-checks are processed using the ACH network. The company is one of ten companies that hold the prestigious NACHA certification for Third-Party Senders and were the second company to receive the certification and are the most tenured to hold the certification.
The company’s card-based processing services enable merchants to process both traditional card-present, tap-and-pay, or swipe transactions, as well as card-not-present transactions. A traditional card-present transaction occurs whenever a card holder physically presents a credit or debit card to a merchant at the point-of-sale. A card-not-present transaction occurs whenever the customer does not physically present a payment card at the point-of-sale and may occur over the Internet, mail, fax or telephone. A tap-and-pay transaction occurs whenever a consumer taps their phone on a physical terminal utilizing third party wallet services like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Google Pay.
The company’s strategy is to drive growth through a leveraged, one to many, distribution model in the software development marketplace. Following the completion of the Singular Payments acquisition, it launched its payment facilitation, PayFac, platform called PayFac-in-a-Box in late 2018 targeting partnership opportunities with app and software developers in bill-centric verticals, such as legal, healthcare, property management, utilities and insurance. The PayFac-in-a-Box platform 'integration layer' offers a simple integration experience for technology companies who are looking to monetize payments within an existing base of downstream clients. The added value of offering the company’s integration partners access to credit card, debit card, ACH and prepaid card issuance capabilities through a single vendor partner relationship in face-to-face, mobile and virtual payment acceptance environments provides a true single channel commerce experience through an application programming interface, API.
The company’s electronic payment processing may take place in a variety of forms and situations. For example, its capabilities allow merchants to convert a paper check to an e-check or receive card authorization at the point-of-sale, allow the company’s merchants’ respective customer service representatives to take e-check or card payments from their consumers by telephone, and to enable their consumers to make e-check or card payments directly through the use of a website or by calling an interactive voice response telephone system.
FiCentive, Inc.
The company provides prepaid card issuance services for corporate clients and consumers through its wholly owned subsidiary, FiCentive, Inc. The company develops and manages a variety of Mastercard-branded prepaid card program types, including consumer reloadable, consumer gift, incentive, promotional, general and government disbursement and corporate expense cards.
Usio Card
Through its December 2014 acquisition of the assets of Akimbo Financial, Inc., the company also added a highly talented technical staff of industry subject matter experts and an innovative cardholder service platform, including cardholder web and mobile applications. These cardholder web and mobile applications have been fully integrated into FiCentive’s prepaid card core processor, and support all program types and brands offered by FiCentive and its clients.
Output Solutions
On December 15, 2020, the company acquired the assets of IMS and entered into the business of electronic bill presentment, document composition, document decomposition and printing and mailing services serving hundreds of customers representing a wide range of industry verticals, including utilities and financial institutions. Through the acquisition, the company acquired new customers and their sales force. The company bought an existing portfolio of customers with a significant revenue stream. This acquisition increased the company’s ability to grow new revenue streams and allows it to reenter the electronic bill presentment and payment revenue stream.
Products and Services
All of its service offerings are supported by its systems’ infrastructure that integrates certain proprietary components with processing systems outsourced to third-party providers to offer the company’s customers a flexible and secure payment process. The company utilizes secure sockets layer architecture so that connections and information are secure from outside inspection. The company also uses 128-bit encryption for all electronic transactions that it processes to make information unreadable as it passes over the Internet. The company’s systems’ infrastructure allows it to work with its customers to build a customized electronic payment service offering tailored to the customer's specific needs. The company has designed and implemented its integrated payment systems to function as gateways between its customers and its third-party processing providers. The company’s systems provide for interfaces with its customers through which payment data is captured electronically and transferred through the connections it has with its processing providers. The company’s systems also provide a data warehousing capability so that all payment data related to a customer can be stored in one place to facilitate efficient data retrieval and analysis. All confidential data stored within and outside the data warehouse is fully encrypted. The company outsources parts of its card-based transaction processing to third-party providers. The company’s card-based processing system can connect and communicate with all of the major card-based processors in the United States.
Payment Processing: The components of the company’s service offerings include all forms of ACH transaction processing, such as Represented Check, which is a consumer non-sufficient funds check that is presented for payment electronically rather than through the paper check collection system, and Accounts Receivable Check Conversion, which is a consumer paper check payment that is converted into an e-check. The company’s customers can initiate ACH transactions directly using an online terminal accessible through a website or it can initiate ACH transactions on their behalf.
The company’s service offering also includes merchant account services for the processing of card-based transactions through the VISA, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and JCB networks, including online terminal services accessed through a website or retail services accessed via a physical terminal. The company offers a proprietary web-based customer service application that combines both ACH and card processing capabilities that allows companies to process one-time and recurring payments via e-checks or credit cards at the request of their consumers. In addition, the company offers an Interactive Voice Response telephone system to companies that accept payments directly from consumers over the telephone using e-checks or credit cards.
Significant innovations to the company’s payment systems have included launching a client facing web application that allows customers to more easily manage their payments; an Apple iOS Software Development Kit, or SDK, that enables developers to easily integrate payment acceptance into their applications; and PINless debit service that allows merchants to debit and credit accounts in real time.
In 2019, the company’s platform expanded to include remotely created check, or RCC, processing. An RCC is a digital image of a paper item originated with proper authorization from consumer checking account information held on file, but without the consumer's original signature. The company’s RCC gateway allows its merchants to automate billing, payment acceptance and customer management. In addition, it provides visibility into the status of payments and accelerates cash flow. Merchants and lenders with high return rates can utilize remotely created checks as an ACH alternative. It reduces the chances of fraud by validating account information upfront and is compliant with the Uniform Commercial Code, Regulation CC, Regulation J and the Check 21 Act.
In 2021 and into early 2022, the company transitioned from a traditional data center to a cloud provider. This transition provides greater speed and capacity, allowing it to process transactions faster per second. The company continues to develop process improvements with a focus on new tools designed to grow sales while improving its internal reporting capabilities. On the client facing front, the company continues to develop enhancements to its hosted payment pages, enrollment and onboarding tools for resellers and monthly reporting and new transaction reporting.
Largely due to its NACHA certification and significant volume of transactions, the company obtained a sponsoring bank and implemented a direct connection into the Fed ACH system and the sole use of a bank routing number. Through this direct connection terminal, the company controls the entire data flow. This connection allows the company to lower overall processing costs, offer later cut off times, speed up the boarding process for merchants, and increase oversight into its ACH processing traffic.
The company will continue to enhance its service offerings to meet customer demands as they arise.
Prepaid and Incentive Card Issuance: The company also provides a variety of prepaid and incentive card issuance services and operate a prepaid core processing platform. The company is a program manager and has card issuance agreements with Sunrise Banks, N.A. and Metropolitan Commercial Bank. The company develops and manages a variety of prepaid card program types, including consumer reloadable, consumer gift, incentive, promotional, general disbursement and corporate expense cards, primarily on behalf of its corporate clients and government entities. The company is exclusively issue Mastercard branded cards currently, but its platform also supports the issuance of Visa and Discover branded card programs. In addition, the company designs, develops and operates feature-rich cardholder web and mobile applications. These web and mobile applications can be branded and customized by corporate clients. In addition, its clients can also brand or white-label physical cards and card package materials, as well as digital cards stored in popular mobile wallets. Clients can order and load virtual and physical cards in bulk using a batch processing system available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through the web or secure file transfer protocol, FTP. There are also more than 75 API endpoints available for direct client integrations. In addition to providing card issuance and money disbursement solutions to corporate clients, the company issues general purpose consumer reloadable cards direct to consumers under the Akimbo and Stream card brands. These consumer card programs work as bank account alternatives or companion cards used for household budgets and allowances. The company’s card issuance platform is integrated to Mastercard’s Digital Enablement Services, or MDES, enabling full control of card provisioning to all popular mobile wallets, including Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. This integration has allowed the company’s platform to offer several unique features to both cardholders and its corporate clients, including in-app provisioning, customized mobile wallet branding, and the real-time delivery of and access to the digital card prior to the receipt of the corresponding physical card. In general, its proprietary, full-stack card issuance and processing platform provides with several competitive advantages as compared to other program managers and prepaid card providers. The company’s platform offers several features unavailable with nearly any other prepaid card processors. In addition, the platform and the current size of its organization enables it to prototype and deploy custom solutions much quicker than the competition. This is highlighted by the fact that several large / Fortune 500 tech, municipalities, and payments companies use the company’s platform for research and developments purposes.
Output Solutions: With the acquisition of the assets of Information Management Solutions, LLC in December 2020, the company offers additional services relating to electronic bill presentment, document composition, document decomposition and printing and mailing services serving hundreds of customers representing a wide range of industry verticals, including utilities and financial institutions. Output Solutions provides printing and mailing services to utilities, healthcare providers, credit unions, banks, governmental agencies, and manufacturing and other customers that have high volume billing and printing needs. The company provides full color digital printing services, producing statements, checks, notices, postcards, envelopes, newsletters, and other items. The company utilizes the latest technology inkjet printers and print 2-up on rolls of paper that are over 17 miles long, producing up to 58,800 full-color images per hour. In 2021, the company became a seamless mailer with the USPS.
Relationships with Sponsors and Processors
In order to provide payment processing services for ACH transactions, the company must maintain a relationship with an Originating Depository Financial Institution, or ODFI, in the ACH network. For the ODFI portion of its ACH business, the company has entered into agreements with the Fifth Third Bank, North American Banking Company, Evolve Bank & Trust, Metropolitan Commercial Bank, and TransPecos Banks.
Sales and Marketing
The company markets and sells its ACH products and services primarily through non-exclusive resellers that act as an external sales force, with minimal direct investment in sales infrastructure and management, as well as direct contact by its sales personnel. The company’s direct sales efforts are coordinated by two sales executives and supported by other employees who function in sales capacities. The company’s primary market focus is on companies generating high volumes of electronic payment transactions. The company tailors its sales efforts to reach this market by pre-qualifying prospective sales leads through direct contact or market research. The company’s sales personnel typically initiate contact with prospective customers that it identifies as meeting its targeted customer profile.
The company also markets and sells its prepaid card program directly to government entities, corporations and to consumers through the Internet. A major initiative will be the packaging and cross selling of its platform of payment options across its portfolio of merchants. As a part of this major initiative, the company will continue to analyze its sales and marketing efforts to optimize productivity, increase sales force effectiveness, broaden its reach through reseller initiatives and advantageous alliances and effectively optimize sales and marketing expenses while meeting its revenue and profit objectives.
With the acquisition of the assets of Information Management Solutions, LLC in December 2020, the company offers additional services relating to electronic bill presentment, document composition, document decomposition and printing and mailing services serving hundreds of customers representing a wide range of industry verticals, including utilities and financial institutions. Through the acquisition, the company acquired new customers and their sales force and the ability to cross-sell existing service offerings to IMS customers and new Output Solutions services to existing Usio customers.
Customers
The company’s customers are merchants and businesses that use its Automated Clearing House and/or card-based processing services in order to provide their consumers with the ability to pay for goods and services without having to use cash or a paper check. These merchant customers operate in a variety of predominately retail industries and are under contract with the company to exclusively use the services that it provides to them. Recent areas of customer focus have included system integrators, churches, charitable organizations, medical and dental clinics, doctor's offices, property management and homeowner associations, hospitality firms and municipalities. Most of the company’s merchant customers have signed long-term contracts, generally with three-year terms, that provide for volume-based transaction fees.
Trademarks and Domain Names
The company owns federally registered trademarks on the marks Usio, Payment Data Systems, Inc., Akimbo, FiCentive Innovations in Prepaid Card Solutions, Don’t change your bank, just your card and ZBILL and their respective designs.
Some of the company’s material websites are www.usio.com, www.payfacinabox.com, www.ficentive.com, www.akimbocard.com, and www.usiooutput.com.
Government Regulation
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to regulate consumer financial services, including many services offered to the company’s customers.
As an agent of, and third-party service provider to, the company’s issuing banks, it is subject to indirect regulation and direct audit and examination by the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The company’s business is subject to the U.S. federal anti-money laundering laws and regulations, including the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), as amended by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001.
The company is also subject to certain economic and trade sanctions programs that are administered by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control that prohibit or restrict transactions to or from or dealings with specified countries, their governments, and in certain circumstances, their nationals, narcotics traffickers, and terrorists or terrorist organizations.
History
The company was founded in 1998. It was incorporated in the state of Nevada in 1998. The company was formerly known as Payment Data Systems, Inc. and changed its name to Usio, Inc. in 2019.
