Payment processing company Cayan has been around in the Boston fintech scene for the last 19 years, making moves while maintaining an unconventional low profile.
In the last year, this 250-employee company signed partnerships (the latest with Squirrel Systems, a provider of POS for the restaurant industry), inked acquisitions (including Card Payment Systems, a Dallas, TX-based payments processing company) and completed the renovation of both its offices in Boston and in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, which required an investment of $8 million.
The main goal of the company is simplifying the payment process for merchants, which essentially means three things, according to founder and CEO Henry Helgeson. First, keep credit card data safe. Second, allowing business owners to accept new forms of payments such as mobile wallets (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay). Third, allowing them to sell both online and in-store through a unified payment platform.
“While this sounds complex, it actually is,” Helgeson said. “There’s a number of things that consumers take for granted around buying online.”
Around a month ago, Cayan also unveiled its new product, Genius Mini, a device that handles payments to a unique business made by tablets from a variety of sources, including chip cards, mobile wallets and magnetic stripe cards such as credit, debit and stored value cards.
“What we’re seeing is that a lot of merchants and businesses want to use an iPad solution, a tablet solution either at the point of sale or in the aisle or at the table,” Helgenson said. “What we’ve done is made it very easy for them to integrate this very tiny device… with tablets.”
As a result, merchants can accept different types of payments not only at the counter, but also on the aisle or at the table, if they’re a restaurant.
Based on One Federal Street, the company headquarter has “napping rooms” for employees, meant to attract, among many other perks, young and talented software engineers. Helgenson said that he founded the company in May 1998, when he lost his job at another credit card company. Last year, Helgenson added that Cayan moved over $20 billion through its platform. As for the next steps for the company, the founder and CEO said that they are working on storing and redeeming loyalty offers rewards on mobile phones, as well as expediting the online check-out process.
“I think Boston is becoming one of the Fintech hubs,” Helgenson said. “I think we have the right combination of the existing banking infrastructure with all these greatest schools, colleges and universities right in the Boston area.”
