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Interview - Joel Barry, CEO of ECHO, Inc.
In a recent
interview with Joel Barry, CEO for ECHO, Inc., he
shared with me some of the highlights of ECHO, how they can
offer such low rates, customer service and
more... (MS = MerchantSeek)
MS: What's the history of ECHO, Inc.? How
did it begin?
ECHO was founded in 1982 and has processed credit cards for 20
years. In 1999 and 2000, ECHO acquired two large check
service firms and is now the fifth largest processor of check
verification activity in the nation. ECHO employs over 210
people and has data centers in three cities, Agoura Hills, CA,
Abuqueruqe, NM, and Boulder, CO.
MS: How come you can offer such low rates while others
charge higher?
ECHO has always considered processing for merchants a trust
between the merchant and ECHO. ECHO is handling their
payment system and, if ECHO does not do a good job, the merchant
could go out of business as a result. That's a lot of
trust for any one business to put in another business. So,
when it came to charging higher fees without a basis, adding a
bunch of additional unexplained fees or, a favorite of many
providers, hiding excessive fees in the fine print of an
agreement like many processors have done, ECHO felt such actions
violated the trust the merchant put in us. ECHO has always
sought to keep the costs as low as possible and still earn a
reasonable profit, believing that is the honorable thing to do
with merchants who have put so much trust in us.
MS: What kinds of measures have you put into place for
superior customer service?
We have a staff of 20 people in a 24/7 customer support center
who are accessible toll-free on 800 number lines. We
monitor the time it takes for a representative to answer and we
also monitor the quality of the answer that our representative
gives. We're proud that over 95% of the calls are being
fully answered by our representatives without having to put the
caller on hold or call back later. We are also very
committed to effectively using the Internet to provide detailed
data to a merchant but we will never consider a web site the
same as or preferable to having the opportunity to speak with a
real person about an issue of importance.
MS: What separates you from the typical Merchant Account
Provider?
Three things:
a) We provide
innovative and integrated services... we provide the terminal
management, the customer support, the transaction processing for
credit card, debit card and check related services, we provide
all the reporting and we consolidate the billing of all
services. With ECHO, merchants do not need to go somewhere
else to get what they need.
b) We are
long-term players... most processors have sold their merchant
portfolios to larger processors only for those merchants to see
their services deteriorate and themselves losing out. For
20 years, ECHO has been there for merchants and I have been at
the helm for 15 of the past 20 years.
c) We see ECHO as
an advocate for the merchant... most merchant programs are fun
by big banks who see merchants as a necessary evil. The
banks issue millions of credit cards so they have to also have
merchants will to take those cards, but if a dispute arises,
they will always side with the cardholder, not the merchant.
ECHO on the other hand issues no cards and only serves
merchants; ECHO is a merchant advocate, we fight
chargebacks as aggressively as we can for our merchants
believing that is what they want us to do. Most processors
don't take such a position.
MS: Compared to other payment gateway companies like Authorize.Net and VeriSign how is ECHO different?
They are great marketers and we
are not! (Sometimes that determines who gets market share
more than who has the best product or service.) ECHO has
focused its resources on technical innovation and not on
marketing. That's why ECHO provides its gateway free as
part of choosing ECHO as a processor. The firms above, by
focusing on marketing, have been able to add an additional fee
on top of the processor fees for their gateway services and, due
to merchants not knowing of any alternative, these firms have
been very successful.
MS:
What advice can you give to those
who are searching for a merchant account for their business
venture?
Ignore the marketing hype and look
for substance. Consider the advantages ECHO brings:
low cost processing, multiple payment services, a free Internet
gateway, free shopping cart, free national directory listing, no
charges if not active in any month, real customer services, and
no automatic limitations on your processing volume, just to name
a few. Also, if you are a non-face-to-face business who
processes a significant volume ($500,000 or more per month), we
suggest you always have a merchant account with two different
processors just in case one decides to stop processing your
account.
MS:
What is ECHO's
plans for the future? Any new projects underway?
ECHO is actively working with Visa
USA on the Visa POS Check Pilot, assisting banks in getting a
check conversion program going for their merchants that utilizes
the Visa network. In addition, ECHO continues to invest in
technical solutions pointed at RCK, ARC and lock-box type of
applications for check processing. Finally, ECHO is moving
its credit card processing to a new platform that will allow it
to be even more competitive in pricing and faster in the
development of new features that it has been in the past so
things are moving at ECHO.
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Find out
why MerchantSeek.com recommends ECHO, Inc.
Read my
recommendation letter.
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