REPAY: Digital Payment Solutions That Enhance Credit Union Platforms and Enable B2B Virtual Card Transactions

In a Nutshell: Small businesses and credit unions often don’t find the solutions they need with corporate digital payment providers. REPAY makes its real-time omnichannel card solutions more accessible to businesses and organizations so they can make and accept payments and serve more customers. The platform integrates inbound acceptance of payments and outbound B2B virtual card payments with existing accounting and management software. That means REPAY gives businesses even more control over when and how they pay.

Digital payment processing methods can expand service options and bring new efficiencies to businesses and organizations, including credit unions. Customers enjoy more payment options and businesses maintain flexibility in B2B transactions.

REPAY offers a unified platform that provides a frictionless and customizable end-to-end solution for payments. It can seamlessly handle all inbound and outbound transactions for a variety of use cases, including lending.

REPAY was founded in 2006 to serve businesses and organizations in underserved verticals. The company’s founders had worked in the consumer lending space and saw that cash and check payments were still preferred. Lenders that adopted digital payments tended to use ACH, or electronic checks, and infrastructure for card payments was relatively rare.

“So we brought debit card processing to the space,” said Tim Murphy, REPAY CFO. “The bigger card companies just didn’t realize there was any card volume there.”

Many of REPAY’s competitors saw that card brands disallowed lenders from accepting credit cards, and cash, check, and ACH transactions were entrenched.

That gave REPAY a significant advantage as it reached out to expand its business services to consumer lenders. Credit unions, automotive lenders, and mortgage lenders began to rely on the REPAY platform for card and payment solutions as the company grew its product line, in part through an acquisition strategy.

REPAY entered the lending market in Canada and gained traction in B2B virtual card payments and payment solutions for hospitals and healthcare systems.

“We own our backend processing platform, so we do our own clearing and settlement with the card brands,” Murphy said. “As a full-service payment processing company with proprietary technology, we go to market in a very integrated way.”

Today, REPAY handles physical and virtual debit and credit processing and ACH transactions. It also works with more than 200 accounting and enterprise management software providers to ensure security and speed for its clients.

In the credit union space, outsource partners are an essential component in resource allocation. They help credit unions provide members with modern payment solutions and compete with other financial institutions.

“Credit unions rely on us to optimize their electronic payments and provide channels including mobile, text, and even interactive voice response to connect with members and nonmembers to repay loans,” Murphy said. “Particularly with indirect lending to nonmembers, we help them enhance the payment experience and collect on outstanding loans.”

REPAY’s spring 2021 acquisition of integrated payments provider BillingTree propelled it further into the credit union market.

“It’s the largest acquisition we’ve done,” Murphy said. “It further expanded our footprint in healthcare, but BillingTree also had a nice credit union business, and we now have over 180 credit union customers combined.”

The platform also integrates messaging management capabilities directly into its payment solutions. Those tools can send customized messages to direct and indirect loan recipients and allow credit unions to communicate business updates and promote new offerings.

REPAY works with credit union staff members on tracking, list management, and content and delivery strategies. In conjunction with REPAY’s Text Pay solution, institutions can use SMS as an end-to-end relationship management tool.

“It’s frustrating when you get a text notification about a bill you need to pay, but you can’t actually pay it,” Murphy said. “With Text Pay, we’ve taken the next step to enable customers to make payments right from their texting app.”

REPAY solutions fit a wide range of B2B payment scenarios because it is both an inbound and outbound processing provider. That makes it a leading end-to-end payment provider for businesses.

B2B payment solutions leverage all of REPAY’s tools to fit a variety of use cases where efficiency and customer service needs merge. REPAY integrates vendor payments automation on the Sage 100 enterprise management platform, which exemplifies how its end-to-end transaction paths work.

“Merchants using Sage could accept payments from other businesses. With this integration, they can now also execute accounts payable transactions that are automatically recorded in Sage,” Murphy said. “We’re one of the only vendors in Sage that does both acceptance and payables, and customers are coming to us because they’d rather have just one payment vendor versus two or three.”

Watch on

Payment groups, vendor group management, invoicing, automatic reconciliation, and custom reporting now flow across accounts receivable and accounts payable in Sage. That optimizes the transaction process and saves on costs by eliminating manual linkups.

The Sage integration incorporates virtual cards, as do all REPAY B2B accounts payable automation solutions. The cards can be set up for one-time use or for a fixed period with an expiration date. Businesses can add spending, category, or vendor limits to maximize security. The REPAY platform also ensures instant fulfillment and reconciliation.

“Virtual cards are different from physical cards because they can be used for specific transactions,” Murphy said. “To do that for customers who are paying their vendors is pretty unique, and that’s an enormous marketplace.”

Virtual cards securely live on the REPAY platform essentially as data tokens, compliant with all payment industry standards. REPAY healthcare customers are also protected under federal health privacy legislation.

“Our technology is highly secure, so the card data itself isn’t exposed,” Murphy said. “We control the tokens, so we control the card data and can pass it where it needs to be for reporting purposes without sharing the card numbers. It’s a big deal, and we take it seriously.”

REPAY developers and customers have extensive API infrastructure at their disposal. Those API programming tools enable the REPAY platform to fit the unique needs of more than 16,000 customers and process $20 billion in card payment volume across all of its verticals.

“We can integrate a new client as quickly as a couple of days,” Murphy said. “And we give them all the resources they need to do it as seamlessly and easily as possible.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020, REPAY became an indispensable payment partner for more businesses as the shift to digital payments gained momentum.

“We saw a big increase in adoption of what we call our omnichannel approach, which enables customers to accept payments remotely — any way they want, any time they want,” Murphy said.

When physical locations closed, credit unions and other lenders took advantage of REPAY’s Instant Funding technology to fund loans directly to debit cards.

“A big part of the consumer experience with a merchant is the payment experience,” Murphy said. “Our job is to enhance and streamline that experience, and that’s what we do.”