Priority CEO Thomas Priore Weighs in on MX Merchant: A Leading Solution for Businesses Moving to Digital Payments Processing

For business owners, one of the biggest advantages of innovative technology is embedded finance and its ability to facilitate cash acceleration. The capacity to move funds quickly helps business owners better manage cash flow — a critical advantage, especially for small to midsize businesses. Embedded finance tools like payments processing platforms are growing so rapidly that an entrepreneur starting a business today could conceivably never interact with a conventional bank. That’s where Thomas Priore, CEO of Priority, enters the conversation.

Priority is a leader in cloud-based payments technology, recently ranked among the world’s top 200 fintech companies by CNBC. Priore says migrating to digitalized financial processes is advantageous for businesses and fast becoming necessary to compete in the modern marketplace.

MX Merchant, a cloud-based payments processing solution, is one of the key Priority products for business owners. Among its many features and services, MX Merchant offers tools that allow for faster financial transactions. It’s a significant change, especially for small to midsize businesses that may not have the ability to borrow from traditional banks.

Without access to capital, cash generation becomes paramount. Cash acceleration allows SMBs to better leverage the money they generate, elevate cash flow management and handle challenges such as moving money across borders or making real-time settlements.

“I think at the end of the day it gets pretty simple,” Thomas Priore said in an interview with PYMNTS, a leading website covering news and information in the payments sector.

“There are valuable assets already running through your ecosystem, whatever that may be. Maybe you’re in the construction space, or maybe you’re a restaurant or a salon. And that asset is payment acceleration,” said Priore.

The Emergence of Embedded Finance and Digital Payments Processing

Embedded finance refers to a wide range of financial products and services offered through non-finance-related companies. The concept isn’t new. For example, department stores have offered credit cards to allow people to finance big purchases for decades. Auto loans, through car dealerships, work in the same way.

The difference today is that advanced technology enables the embedding of financial products into digital services people routinely use. Examples include digital wallets, shopping cart platforms, and customer loyalty apps, according to a McKinsey & Company report. “For consumers and businesses using these interfaces, acquiring financial services becomes a natural extension of a nonfinancial experience such as shopping online, scheduling employees to work shifts, or managing inventory. This more deeply embedded form of embedded finance is what has grown so significantly in the U.S. in recent years.”

The report noted that payments processing has emerged as “one of the first use cases of embedded finance.” McKinsey said success in this area helped fuel $20 billion in revenues through embedded finance in the United States in 2021, estimating the market could double in size within the next three to five years.

MX Merchants Offers Example of What Payments Processing Platforms Offer Businesses

As an important tool in embedded finance, cloud-based payments processing platforms offer consumers the convenience and flexibility of making payments in a variety of ways. This is clearly an advantage for businesses that want to grow their customer base.

However, digitizing payments is also critical to improving business-to-business transactions. Advanced software can improve the management of recurring payments. Automated invoices speed up the billing process and allow companies to get paid faster.

As a founding member and CEO of Priority Technology Holdings, Thomas Priore has grown his client base by offering businesses — particularly SMBs — the advantages of a digital payments processing platform. The company now has 825,000 customers across its SMB, B2B, and enterprise channels. It’s the 13th-largest merchant acquirer in the U.S., as well as a provider of payments solutions to global institutions.

MX Merchant provides an example of the current trend in payments processing, offering a customizable payments ecosystem in one platform. It allows businesses to streamline operations by providing services that include automated invoicing, sales tracking, customer engagement, and financial management.

A key to a successful payment processing platform is its compatibility with useful apps. In the case of MX Merchant, the list of apps businesses can use includes MX Advantage, which allows merchants to apply cash discounts, convenience fees, service fees, and surcharging regardless of the payments environment. Another is ACH.com, the Priority-owned automated clearing house and electronic fund transfer transactions service.

Through MX Merchant, businesses can sync with Intuit’s QuickBooks Online tool and use Invoice, a software system that helps businesses get paid faster by automating invoicing and managing recurring billings. Other apps include MX Express, which allows businesses to accept mobile card payments with optional gratuity, and Insights, which extracts insights from large data sets on customer behavior and competitors within a local demographic.

MX Merchant is a leader in a trend that shows no signs of slowing, as cloud-based payment platforms offer an unprecedented level of convenience for customers. For businesses, they increase the efficiency of operations, accelerate cash, and enhance the ability to break into new markets. “Even small and medium-sized businesses can now utilize cloud-based payments as a convenient way to access new markets and extend their reach,” according to Forbes.

Thomas Priore on MX Merchant and the Benefits of a Payments Processing

The services offered by a payments processing solution like MX Merchant help SMBs capture the full benefits of digitizing payments. Thomas Priore said, “Migrating to a digital payments solution benefits both B2B and B2C transactions in a wide range of industries — and these solutions will continue to expand to support our customers.”

“It’s not just a strategy that fits one segment,” Priore states in the PYMNTS interview. “In B2C, which is really the SMB acquiring space, we think there’s a need to start bundling payments and banking solutions. The reason for that is that 91% of small businesses don’t like their bank. That’s a value story, and by doing that, that can accelerate their cash.”

He added it also benefits B2B transactions, especially SMBs, in a time when they face economic headwinds. “The economy is challenging, consumers are spending less, it’s going to eventually hit given the massive increase in consumer debt that is out there,” claims Thomas Priore. “Businesses need to figure out other sources of efficiency and profitability, so they’re moving toward digitizing payables.”

McKinsey noted the same trend in its report, writing, “Payments-focused technology providers are leading the charge on embedded finance, using their money movement capabilities to attract distributors and then expanding into products that have been the strongholds of banks, such as lending.”

The expansion of embedded finance services, as well as the continued evolution of digital payments processing platforms, look to remain vital components for success in modern business.