Kyle Pexton from NMI talks about the transformation in the financial payments industry and how NMI is contributing to it.
1. Can you tell us about your role at NMI?
I serve as NMI’s President and CFO, and I am focusing on scaling the company’s commercial and business development efforts through both organic and inorganic growth. Part of this growth is attributed to the 2018 acquisition of Creditcall, which allowed us to expand overseas and build on our EMV technology and card-present expertise, as well as our most recent acquisition of USAePay earlier this year, which further strengthened our card-present point-of-sale offerings.
2. Can you tell us about your journey into this industry?
While I’ve been with NMI for a little over seven years, I’ve been in payments for nearly 20 years in various management positions. My experience lies heavily in fintech and over my career, I’ve been instrumental in managing growth enterprises in private equity environments.
3. How does your role help to accelerate your company’s mission to enable more payments, in more ways and more places?
As the president of NMI, it is a top priority for me to ensure that our ISO, ISV and FI partners are well-positioned to deliver on the ever-changing demands of consumers and anticipates what they will expect from payments moving forward.
4. How do you think technology is disrupting payments?
It’s incredible how technology innovations have impacted how we pay for goods and services. The lines between card-present and card-not-present transactions are being blurred, and consumers can pay even with the scan of their palm or face.
But to keep this innovation moving, it’s up to merchants to invest in the right payment technologies to meet their customers at every point of engagement, whether that be in a store, on a mobile app or online. While merchants have to be ready for any payment option that consumers demand, we help equip them with a strong payment tech stack so the consumer has a quick, painless experience when shopping at their store.
5. What are the benefits of NMI’s white-labeled solution for your partners?
NMI is a white-labeled solution, which means our partners (i.e. ISOs, ISVs, and FIs) can brand and sell our payments enablement services as their own directly to the end merchant. One major advantage of this approach is that our partners can use their own company logo and branding to customize the look and feel of the payment gateway to match their brand, which enhances customer loyalty. Our partners can also improve their product portfolios by incorporating the aspects of our payment offerings that best suit the needs of their customers. Beyond that, we manage the service on behalf of our partners, so they never have to worry about security, compliance and infrastructure issues.
6. How does NMI work with banks?
At NMI, we recognize how many touchpoints banks have with merchants and the untapped opportunity they have to provide them with payment solutions. We want to ensure banks can provide all aspects of small business needs to their customers, and the one piece of that puzzle that is usually missing is payments. That’s where we come in. By providing banks with the technology to enable payments themselves, we empower banks to become a streamlined one-stop shop for all of a merchant’s financial needs. This allows banks to serve their customers better and also beat Square and Stripe at their own game as these fintechs continue to target this payment weak spot in banks’ relationships with businesses.
7. How do you help banks compete against the fintechs who are launching banking as a service?
Small merchants are a bank’s most valuable customer. These customers are coming under attack by fintechs who position their payments offerings as simple and easy-to-implement. Additionally, many of these fintechs have registered as financial institutions, and are poaching these valuable customers from traditional banks. By partnering with a payments enablement company, like NMI, banks can easily replicate this simplistic payments offering and package it up with their banking services, protecting their relationships with their merchant customers. Consequently, this not only gives banks the ability to compete with fintechs but also opens up a profitable new revenue stream for them.
8. What major developments are you planning for in the near future?
We recently partnered with MasterCard to launch the first pilot of Cloud Point of Sale (POS) acceptance technology, which enables contactless payments acceptance via a mobile phone. We’re excited to roll out our own Tap to Mobile offering later this year to enable our partners the ability to accept payments in a new, frictionless way.
9. Can you tell us about your team and how it supports you?
I’m very fortunate to work with an extremely talented team of developers, sales, marketing, and M&A experts. Their deep understanding of the payments ecosystem, coupled with their passion for developing best-of-class products and helping our partners be successful is really NMI’s “secret sauce.” They work tirelessly to ensure our partners and merchants have the best payments technology on the planet!
10. Which Book are you reading these days?
I’m currently reading the biography of Alexander Hamilton. I love to learn about the lives and leadership philosophies of our country’s founding fathers.
