North American Bancard Acquires B2B Payments Firm PayTrace

B2B payments solution provider PayTrace says it has been acquired by Michigan-based credit card processing firm North American Bancard (NAB).

“PayTrace is becoming their preferred gateway solution for all merchant types,” the company wrote in a blog post.

And with the acquisition, PayTrace has become certified on the Electronic Payment Exchange (EPX), which is NAB’s wholly owned payment processor, designed to provide simplified shopping with data security.

Based in Spokane, Washington, PayTrace says it processes more than $30 billion in payment a year and provides businesses with “reliable uptime, authorization, settlement and reporting.”

Founded in 1992, North American Bancard processes more than $45 billion in transactions a year and, per its website, helps merchants with “innovations in credit card processing, ecommerce, mobile payments, back-end business solutions and more.”

Read more: North American Bancard on Why Merchants Should Focus on User Experience

Earlier this year, PYMNTS spoke with Jim Parkinson, NAB’s chief experience officer, about the balance merchants must strike between implementing new payment technology and the cost that comes with making these upgrades.

“More than ever, merchants don’t want to change things because of the cost of training their staff, potential downtime and other impacts to the business,” he said. “We always have to keep in mind that speed and simplicity are critical at the point of sale.”

And there’s the matter of process complexity, even when the correct technical point-of-sale (POS) features are available. Merchants, particularly smaller ones, may not want to have to manage the bells and whistles that come with advanced payments solutions.

“A lot of smaller merchants just want to get their money, and they don’t want to deal with the PCI [compliance], fraud protection or a lot of features that POS devices may provide,” Parkinson told PYMNTS. “While the days of the analog device are long gone, unfortunately, many merchants crave the simplicity of those devices.”