Modern-day apps for making payments to businesses and individuals continue to make the transaction process easier and easier, but the antiquated fee structure - reaching as high as three percent for each transaction - continues to impede on mass adoption of these services.
Charlie Youakim spent five years at the helm of Passport, a mobile payment system within the transportation industry, making repeated attempts to reduce these payment processing costs. Ultimately, Charlie was unable to do so at Passport, despite continued annual growth. Leaving in December of 2015, Charlie devoted his time to reflection and to research, continuing his focus on the problems with merchant processing.
Enter Sezzle. Charlie and Paul Paradis found the solution to this expensive problem by reverse engineering the transaction process. By eliminating the middlemen and unnecessary buffers used by other credit card companies, Sezzle cuts competitors’ processing fees in half, even incentivizing bank-to-bank transactions with a one-percent rewards program. Their optimization of the transaction process is rapidly attracting customers, signing 32 merchant partners within 9 months of the brands launch.
The party is just getting started for the Sezzle team, which anticipates integration in over 200 online merchants within the next year, along with a consumer base of over 10,000 users. In the meantime, the startup is raising cash to accelerate growth (already accruing over $1.35 million to date).
Interested in bringing Sezzle to your business? Want to learn more as a potential customer? Catch the Sezzle team at the upcoming Beta.MN / Showcase event. The event will be held at the Target Commons on Sept. 19th from 5:30-8 pm CT. Secure your ticket today, as remaining tickets are in short supply.
