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Seeing an opportunity to offer payment acceptance along with its encryption and tokenization technologies to its enterprise clients, Bluefin Payment Systems LLC has invested an undisclosed sum in payment facilitator Payfactory Inc. The investment, which will create a strategic relationship between the two companies, will enable Payfactory to expand its operations by servicing large clients such as healthcare and insurance providers and utilities. Like many payment facilitators, Payfactory primarily services micro merchants.
By forming a strategic partnership with Payfactory, Bluefin can provide payment acceptance to its clients. Typically, payfac technology has been available to either small software companies through a limited number of large providers at a high cost and with no revenue sharing, or to the largest software companies that opt to take on all of the technology, security, regulation, and financial risks involved, says Payfactory chief executive Ruston Miles, who founded Bluefin and remains a strategic advisor to the company.
Atlanta-based Bluefin plans to integrate Payfactory’s technology into its Decrypt point-to-point encryption service, which enables processors, payment gateways, and software platforms to connect to Bluefin. Decrypt includes PCI-validated P2PE, tokenization, and 3-D Secure. As a result, the investment means Bluefin will be able to offer payment solutions without having to develop the technology on its own. Bluefin, which services primarily enterprise clients, provides P2PE and tokenization to more than 20,000 clients in 47 countries.
“We are seeing more and more large companies wanting Payfac technology and this investment creates a strategic partnership that is a natural extension of our business,” Miles says.
The partnership will also enable Bluefin and Payfactory to deliver a secure Payfac-as-a-Service option, enabling mid-market software companies to reap all of the benefits of Payfac along with payment revenue sharing, Miles adds.
The payment facilitator model has helped drive the ubiquity of electronic payments worldwide by making payment acceptance readily available to small merchants through the business software they use. “Payfac technology has been great for small merchants, but there is so much more that can be done with it,” says Miles.
Bluefin is not the only company investing in Payfactory during this latest round of funding. Other investors will be announced in the coming weeks, says Miles.
