What’s in a name, anyway?
Sage Payment Solutions Inc. provides integrated payment processing and business solutions in North America, and as of Jan. 30, will operate under the new corporate name of Paya, which marks a shift in the company’s vision and strategy.
In August 2017, the payment business (which is now Paya) of former parent company Sage Software was sold to private equity firm GTCR. Even as recently as this month, Paya was showcasing its latest services under the Sage brand name
Paya CEO Joe Kaplan says the switch represents the “fresh and progressive company” it is trying to build for its employees, partners, and customers.
“We are creating something special and compelling here. Our mission is to deliver new technologies to the market and offer innovative, integrated payment solutions that will help our customers simplify business complexity and concentrate on growing their business,” he adds in a Jan. 30 press release.
Greg Cohen, Paya president, tells ITBusiness.ca that when GTCR bought the Sage payment business, it committed $350 million USD of equity dollars to developing and upgrading the commerce platform. So far, Paya has only spent about a quarter of that, meaning big things are still yet to come.
“We’re going to organically invest in tools and technologies and things of that sort, and we’ll have many opportunities as well to inorganically invest with buying capabilities, buying distribution, buying things to just make the overall platform and the overall experience much more robust,” he continues.
Looking ahead, Paya’s president says the next two to three years is all about driving growth within the market and staying focused on its core competencies of card processing and data exchanges.
“When you deal with an accounting package, you’re not just running a payment transaction, you’re posting back into the ledger and you’re pushing out the invoicing. You’re doing all these things that create a two-way flow of information between you and the technology provider to create a better experience for the customer. And so we’re going to continue to drive down that product roadmap and put marketing and distribution into full gear in those segments,” Cohen says. “We can support retail and restaurant and similar sectors, but we find ourselves much more into businesses and biller segments and areas like that, because they’re the ones who really can take advantage of all of our core competencies.”