Growth-Seeking Payments Exec Makes the Bold Play

When a business grows dramatically, it changes — and often in a really good way. That is what happened at Intuit as revenues of its Innovative Merchant Services business, a 2003 acquisition founded by Joe Kaplan, expanded to $400 million in 2009. (Today IMS processes $10 billion in transactions annually.)

Jeff Broudy, former National Sales Manager at IMS, was one of those really happy campers. But today, Broudy now serves as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Total Merchant Services, where he is trying to convince lightning to strike twice — in the same industry. You see, Kaplan is CEO there, and the two met decades ago, in southern California in 1982. Now some thirty years later they find themselves reunited to build a new player in the merchant services space.

For that lightning to indeed strike twice, Total Merchant Services (a registered ISO of HSBC Bank, for those few that haven’t heard) will be trying to replicate the same type of agent network that Intuit and IMS pivoted from last May. These days, Intuit leverages its tax and accounting software base— particularly QuickBooks — to connect to merchants.

Now at TMS, Broudy views the ISO/agent structure as a regained advantage, because it provides the company a unique opportunity to solve problems for merchants that go beyond receiving payment.

Broudy mentions three key topics specifically beyond payment acceptance: loyalty solutions; customer analytics; and horizontal partnerships. It’s part of a larger view of the industry, and of business: “Merchants are going to expect more,” he says.

Viewing the relationship between acquiring agent and merchant creatively, and through a wide-angle lens, is what Broudy is hoping will result in opportunities for expansion in the future. As for right now, Broudy says working for Total Merchant Services has put him in an entrepreneurial environment to try to replicate the hockey stick success of his former employer, now a leader in its category.

At his new home, Broudy says, “I can charter my own growth.”

Good luck Jeff!