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Silicon Slopes: What’s your background and how did ProPay come about?

Gary Goodrich: I joined ProPay during the summer of 2000 as CEO and a board member.  ProPay was founded in 1997 as a clever and revolutionary payments company, but it was in serious need of a financial overhaul after the "Dot-Bomb" Crash in early 2001 -- and I especially like to jump head-first into volatile ventures when they look riskiest!  After commuting to Orem, Utah from San Francisco for a year, I moved my family from the Bay Area to continue my work with ProPay.

Prior to coming to ProPay and returning to my Utah roots, I worked on the West Coast for 15 years; mainly in general management in the investment business. I have also spent time back East on Wall Street working for companies like Goldman Sachs, Kidder Peabody/PaineWebber, and Sutro & Co. (now part of Royal Bank of Canada's Dain Rauscher Inc.). In addition to managing investments, I have managed businesses in the mutual fund, insurance/annuity, estate planning, restricted stock, and fee-based management areas of investments.  I earned a Law and MBA degrees from Brigham Young University.

Silicon Slopes: ProPay has recently been invited to be one of eBay’s electronic merchant accounts for sellers. What does this mean for ProPay?

Gary Goodrich: We are honored to be chosen as eBay's first designated outside merchant account provider.  We have enormous respect for what eBay and PayPal have built up over the past decade, despite recent market hiccups.  We expect to see significant additions to our revenues from eBay-related business over time, but for now we are making our offering rather limited, as we refine and tailor the ProPay offering to eBay's top "powersellers."  Later, we hope to broaden our ProPay payment services offering to more eBay members – including those who aren't necessarily "Powersellers."  Due to the unique needs of online auction players, we want to refine and hone our offering before making it widely available. 

Silicon Slopes: How did the opportunity arise with eBay and how long did the partnership process take?

Gary Goodrich: We were flattered to be contacted by eBay, as they reportedly sorted through many prospective payment vendors and chose ProPay as one firm that (as I understand it) could integrate into eBay’s system quickly and professionally, and could maintain eBay’s high standards of reliability, uptime, and security.  It took many dedicated months with scores of ProPay folks -- along with equally dedicated eBay professionals -- to integrate our services; a process that continues to be refined as we speak. 

Silicon Slopes:  How does the eBay opportunity play into the company’s overall strategy for the next five years? 10 years?

Gary Goodrich: While we’re very excited about serving more eBay members, we have many additional markets to serve. To the delight of millions of users (both buyers and sellers, both online and in-person), ProPay has been offering services that are safe, simple and affordable payment services for almost 12 years now, and serving the needs of merchants ranging from multi-billion dollar corporations to the smallest of one-person, part-time businesses. We specialize in enabling "micro-merchants" (including small professional law and accounting offices, sole proprietors, direct sales distributors, therapists, craft sellers, mobile service providers, etc.) to easily grow their businesses by safely and affordably accepting debit/credit cards and other payments. We plan to expand our payment offerings to serve not only the eBay auction space, but also many more mobile, face-to-face transactions, rent/HOA payment applications, home service and contracting payments, and much more.  So, while we’re excited about serving more eBay members, there are many additional markets we serve as well.

In addition to serving the needs of merchants to accept credit/debit cards, we also issue stored-value/debit cards that don't charge the high interest rates and fees of credit cards.  People want alternatives for their payment needs, and that’s what we provide. 

Silicon Slopes: What is ProPay doing that minimizes standard merchant headaches for their clients?

Gary Goodrich: Merchant processing fees and charges have been complex, costly, and almost unintelligible to most users.  Rather than confound our merchants with such complex fee structures, we provide very simple, straight-forward fee structures that frequently result in a much lower overall cost.  Many of our merchants can turn their Internet-connected computers or even their telephones into virtual terminals, avoiding the relatively high costs of dedicated swipe terminals.  For those customers that would prefer a card-swipe terminal, we provide swipe devices that are among the least expensive and most secure in the industry.  Besides appreciating the affordability and simplicity of our services, our clients enjoy working with our friendly, helpful customer service representatives. 

Silicon Slopes: What differentiates ProPay from other online merchant accounts?

Gary Goodrich: We’re “Safe, Simple and Affordable!”  ProPay offers some of the most innovative, cutting edge capabilities in the industry, particularly around protecting cardholder data from thieves.  Increasing regulatory burdens are becoming very expensive and even confounding for many merchants. ProPay's latest offerings can greatly assist these merchants to easily and safely comply with regulations and, most importantly, protect their customers' sensitive cardholder data.  This lets our merchants focus on succeeding in their own respective businesses -- instead of becoming full-time payments/security specialists.  Time is money, and protecting your customers' data is everything.

Silicon Slopes: How is ProPay Funded?

Gary Goodrich: We have grown rather "organically" during the past 11-plus years.  In other words, we were funded by ourselves, friends, family and smart angel investors -- not big, controlling venture capitalists -- and our profits have been re-invested to further fund our growth throughout the years.  Because our own money is continually at stake, we especially emphasize safety, security, and conservative operations.   We have always favored serving family-friendly businesses, and continuously refused our services to gambling, pornography and other illicit business services -- even when large sums of money were offered to us.   It may seem old-fashioned, but most of our customers appreciate our standards and business values.   

Silicon Slopes: Can you talk about your company in terms of sales and employee growth?

Gary Goodrich: As a private firm, we do not release financials to the public, but we are pleased to say that we are experiencing robust growth now, even in this difficult macro-economic environment.  Our revenues have grown steadily every year since our founding in 1997, and we have strong cash reserves.  Still, we really define success by empowering our clients with innovative payment services (of many kinds) that are: Safe, Simple, and Affordable.

Silicon Slopes: As ProPay grows, do you plan to remain fully based in Utah?

Gary Goodrich: Yes.  Basing ProPay in Utah has been one of our best moves.  Utah has the best business environment, the best natural environment, and (most importantly) the very best and brightest workers. We all work hard at ProPay, but we offer wages and benefits that are very robust and well above average, so our people generally want to stay with ProPay for the long haul. 

Thank you.