These are exciting and extraordinary times over at leading payments solution company, OrbitalPay, as they ready the roll out of an all-new technology platform.
The company’s CEO, Steve Bryson, said he is taking his game to the next level with OrbitalPay, which extends beyond the typical gateway to offer more features and benefits for our industry.
OrbitalPay is not just a gateway anymore. We have developed additional billing, settlement and fraud technologies tailored to meet our merchant’s needs and comply with card brand rules.
Bryson recently sat down with XBIZ at the closely held company’s offices in Torrance, Calif., to discuss his new project, which has been years in the making.
The idea behind the next generation of OrbitalPay, Bryson said, is to help grow and gain new customers and retain existing ones with thoughtful features that reduce friction and customer acquisition.
All along the way, he said, clients will see increases to their bottom lines.
“OrbitalPay is not just a gateway anymore,” he said. “We have developed additional billing, settlement and fraud technologies tailored to meet our merchant’s needs and comply with card brand rules. No longer do our merchants need three partners to be able to process transactions,” Bryson said of the platform. “It has an ACH system with multiple ODFI capabilities, (originating depository financial institution — a banking term used in connection with automated clearing houses). With credit card authorization, we are providing additional benefits to allow for consolidated settlement. We call it authorization without settlement, where you might want to do some other things with authorization before you settle a transaction,” he said. “We’ve found areas where we can shave costs, and when you take the totality of the transaction, we are talking about significant savings” he said.
“Everything is virtualized, cloud-based and can run in as many instances or locations as needed. Our technology stack is all Java-based and is focused on the internet in all aspects.”
With OrbitalPay’s rollout, Bryson has brought aboard several new executives to get the project rolling from start to completion.
In April, Stephen Hoofring, a payments executive who has worked for processors, ISOs, and ISVs, was tapped as president of Global Electronic Technology. The company also welcomed Victor Marotta, a former executive at Merrick Bank, as chief financial officer in December.
“This hasn’t been a Steve Bryson production; this has been a big team effort — like big time,” Bryson said. “I decided about two years ago that we would invest and become the leader in delivering financial technology solutions.
“So, what we did is that we pulled everything in and went into a year and a half of research and development. When we came out of the R and D, we came out with the new technology platform and a new team to help drive the company.
Hoofring, the new president, told XBIZ that Bryson had a strong vision about where he wanted to take the company and what he wanted to do with it.
The idea behind the next generation of OrbitalPay was to bring a platform to the adult space that would extend over time, becoming more relevant in the industry as years go by, Hoofring said.
“We want to be able to offer unique billing capabilities, unique management capabilities between the customer and our merchant and to offer different settlement opportunities,” Hoofring said. “At the end of the day, we are in the business of helping people make money and help deliver that money to them.”
“What makes us different is it’s our code, our source, our product, all proprietary technology that we built from the ground up” Hoofring said. “It’s all virtualized, cloud-based, implemented in AWS, scalable horizontally and vertically.”
OrbitalPay, Bryson said, continues to provide concierge services to help businesses set up and maintain merchant accounts and gateways — including account preparations, site analysis and consultation to help keep businesses generating income — providing clients with real answers in real time.
The company has built a golden reputation appealing to long-term relationships with clients seeking stability and higher earnings. To do that, personalization has been key to OrbitalPay’s success and what sets it apart from its competitors.
“You can come to us now and say, this is how I process,” Bryson said. “It can be alien and foreign, and we will be able to modify our systems to meet your needs.”
Inside OrbitalPay’s expansive offices, the company has an army of in-house programmers that are working on OrbitalPay and special projects for Orbital Pay clients — from building unique data streams to enhance chargeback reporting or building detection programs for merchants to monitor potential month-end chargeback problems.
One of OrbitalPay’s premiere clients is Jake Jaxson, Owner of acclaimed adult studio brand CockyBoys.com.
Jaxson told XBIZ that customization isn’t the only thing that sets the adult processing company apart from the rest. Personalization also is part of the process.
Jaxson said that Bryson flew him out from New York to OrbitalPay’s Torrance offices so that they could chat and find ways CockyBoys.com could even earn more revenue. “It’s a rare thing … a lot of businesspeople don’t want to engage and ask questions like, how can I make you more money?” Jaxson said. “Steve and his team interact with their clients on a level that you don’t see everyday.”
Rapid changes in the e-commerce marketplace continue to drive his company to be more nimble and responsive to merchants, Bryson said.
“When our merchants come to us and say, I really need this, we are going to be the folks to say, ‘we can help you,’” Bryson said.
“Our systems and products help keep track of your business activities and work directly with you to mitigate risks and potential issues,” Bryson said.
Bryson noted that the new OrbitalPay platform was initiated with security in mind, and that the company constructed it to extend well beyond PCI compliance requirements.
“Part of our job is to protect our merchants and their data so managing data in the most effective way is built into the system,” he said.
“We decided to construct our own sensitive data vault and accompanying token service. One difference is that we built it to accept any sensitive data and return a token,” he said. “To start, we are supporting card and checking accounts, but we can extend that service to provide added security for other sensitive data that a merchant may want to store but doesn’t want to keep.
“Another application we constructed allows our merchants the ability to accept payments within their web pages but still avoid handling card data,” Bryson said. “To do this we have built a set of services that keeps the customer within the merchants shopping experience and still avoids having to store, process or transmit the card data.
“This will provide a better overall shopping experience and will attract more customers,” he said.
“For those merchants that may want to perform authorization separate from the settlement transactions, we have developed multiple bulk-payment functions to allow our merchants efficiently perform either authorization or settlement either via a bulk file or through an efficient interface in our processing center.
“And, of course, we have a new recurring payments manager to allow our merchants to establish products, customers, contracts, and set up schedules for payments. The system is robust and includes an account updater and reports to help manage those payment schedules.”
With the upcoming next-gen OrbitalPay launch slated for Q1 2018, Bryson said that the company is “thrilled about our new services and bringing new technology to the marketplace.”
“We’ve always been in the adult space; we’ve always had a fair share [of the market], but we’re coming to play now,” Bryson said. “At OrbitalPay we are looking for hard problems to solve and welcome the opportunity to meet and work with folks to discuss their business needs and how we can become a more valued partner to their success.”
“We see a lot of opportunity in the adult space, and we want to continue to invest in it,” he said.
“I started OrbitalPay, to prove a point — that you can build a company based on integrity,” Bryson said. “And everyone told me you couldn’t and that I was full of shit, and they would eat my lunch.
“Well, nobody got my lunch money. And I’m still here.”
