2013 Top Company winner: Mercury Payment Systems

Gigi Sukin //November 1, 2013//

2013 Top Company winner: Mercury Payment Systems

Gigi Sukin //November 1, 2013//

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Mercury Payment Systems (Watch a video about Mercury)

Matt Taylor is betting on brick and mortar.

“We want to help merchants feel empowered to attract, retain and excite customers,” the CEO of Mercury Payment Systems said. As such, “Main Street countertops must be equipped with the right kinds of mobile technology to interact with consumers during and beyond the point-of-sale.”

Mercury is one of the nation’s fastest-growing payment processers, with more than 500 point-of-sale (POS) software vendors and 2,500 POS value-added-resellers.

The Durango-based business, the 25th largest merchant acquirer in the world, made a mid-August announcement of its partnership with e-commerce heavyweight PayPal that will effectively allow Mercury’s base of more than 80,000 merchants to accept PayPal payments in their Main Street shops as well as online. For Mercury, the deal delivers highly customized and locally based payment solutions for merchants to seamlessly integrate up-to-date technology into their existing POS systems.

“These services can grow with the merchants as they scale their businesses, while also simplifying the things they’ve traditionally struggled with,” Taylor said.

As mobile payments and smartphone applications become increasingly ubiquitous, Taylor predicts a substantial number of daily transactions will occur without direct interaction between customer and merchant within the next five years.

With 250 Denver-based team members and a 420-person presence in Durango, Taylor quips that Mercury’s “got (our) cake and eat(s) it, too. This is a cool environment to live and work,” he said. “There’s something special in Colorado, momentum around economic development, and people are excited to innovate and contribute.”

And contribute Mercury does, with the company’s philanthropic arm, MercuryGives, which has provided $650,000 in monetary donations and more than 14,000 volunteer hours to date.

“There has never been a more exciting time in the payment technology space,” said Taylor, who took his post in 2009 and has since led the company through aggressive growth. “We have reached a tipping point for mobile and digital wallet payments.”