“Our corporate strategy has been to enable payments from signup to payout,” said Kate Hampton, chief strategy officer of NMI, or Network Merchants LLC.
NMI provides a white-label payments service to independent sales organizations that connect merchants and payment processors, software publishers and financial technology companies. Founded in 2001, NMI has had to respond to technology changes in payments over the decades, including the emergence of disruptive payments companies such as Stripe Inc. and Square parent Block Inc. (SQ).
“We realized pretty quickly that we have to continue expanding and continue adding value to our customers,” Hampton said.
Stacking Payments Layers
NMI has more than 3,900 clients and processes more than $200 billion in payments per year. The company has about 400 employees and gains 23 more with the Sphere commercial businesses. Insight Partners joined backers Francisco Partners Management LLC and Great Hill Partners LP in September 2021.
The Schaumburg, Ill., company was historically a payments gateway, essentially a conduit between customers, merchants and payment processors.
“You’re passing information about the authorization back and forth,” Hampton said. “You request authorization and it comes back, either declined or approved, and then you pass it back.”
Network Merchants added layers of payments capability and services through acquisitions.
The company purchased CreditCall Ltd. from Bestport Ventures LLP and FF&P Private Equity Ltd. in March 2018 to expand its card-present capabilities, meaning transactions in which a card is physically present at the sale.
NMI added Integrated Reporting is Simple LLC, which does business as IRIS CRM, in January 2022. The target is a merchant relationship management platform that helps to onboard and support new merchants, among other matters.
Next was the payment solutions business of Agreement Express Inc. in December 2022, which allows NMI’s clients to sign up merchants, monitor risks and provide other services.
“Our partners can sign up their merchants in a span of five, 10 minutes in an automated way — auto approve, auto decline,” Hampton said. “That completed the signup layer for us.”
Editor’s note: The original, full version of this article on Network Merchants was published Oct. 31, 2023, on The Deal’s premium subscription website. For access, log in to TheDeal.com or use the form below to request a free trial.
