Galileo Processing Expands Beyond the Prepaid Niche Into the Wider World of Payments

Best known for serving prepaid card providers, Galileo Processing says it is rapidly expanding into other parts of the electronic-payments industry with new services, including application programming interfaces supporting cryptocurrency transactions.

Salt Lake City, Utah-based Galileo declined to disclose actual numbers, but said earlier this week that it posted a 150% increase in new clients in 2017 versus 2016, and that dollars loaded onto its platform grew 23%.

“Galileo is widely perceived as a prepaid processor, but prepaid is actually the smallest portion of our current volume,” a spokesperson for the 18-year-old privately held company tells Digital Transactions News by email. “Our flexible platform and extensive suite of APIs support all payments products, including debit, credit, commercial, virtual, cryptocurrency, multi-currency, and any number of hybrid and custom solutions.”

At its current growth rate, Galileo expects 2018’s volume to be 60% higher than 2016’s.

Last year’s highlights included development of a so-called sandbox for clients to test Galileo APIs without signing non-disclosure agreements, development of cryptocurrency APIs, and enhancements of its fraud-control service with artificial intelligence. Galileo also began serving online brokerage clients.

“Until recently, most payments products were relatively simple, and most processors could manage the necessary functionality,” the spokesperson says. “The most notable reason for our recent growth is the realization that many processors can’t manage the complexity of many fintech products, and Galileo is becoming the go-to technology partner that powers today’s payments solutions.”