About Clearly Payments
We don’t think merchants should be paying 3% to 6% of all their hard-earned sales to credit card companies. We want to drive that price down and eventually take it to zero. Our vision is a world where payments are immediate, free, global, and frictionless.
Our mission is to drive down the cost for merchants to accept payments. Period.
The payments market is currently dominated by multi-national credit card processors and banks. It’s an incredibly large, $7 trillion, market. The problem in credit card processing is not the technology. The technology is out there and it works. It's reliable and it's secure. The problem in the payments industry and credit card processing is the cost to merchants.
Cost is reason traditional credit card processors have 20% to 30% customer churn per year. Merchants find out their fees are higher than they were told (i.e. hidden fees) or credit card processing companies slowly creep up the fees every 6 months. When merchants discover the high rates, they switch. The endless shuffle of merchants across the handful of large payment processors continue. That’s insanity. That's right, 80%+ of all processing is with 5 companies. They can afford this endless shuffle, but it's wasteful for merchants.
Clearly Payments is here to change all that. We're driving down the cost for merchants to accept payments and achieve our vision of frictionless payments. Yes, we're racing the price to the bottom. Merchants come to Clearly Payments because of the unbeatable rates and they stay with Clearly Payments because the rates don't go up.
How we're doing it
Clearly Payments is a merchant services provider (MSP) sometimes called an ISO (independent sales organization). This means we're registered by Visa and MasterCard to service the credit card processing industry. We are backed by US Bank for our credit card processing and partnered with some of the largest payment technology companies in existence. The processing systems we have is used by some of the largest companies in the world - they work and they're secure.
Our first step in the plan to lower the cost for merchants is to create a credit card processor with an incredibly low cost structure. We keep costs low with:
- Virtual teams and cloud software to operate our business,
- Partnering with the best payment providers in the world for technology, and
- Customer acquisition through communities, word-of-mouth, and referral partners.
This allows us to pass on the savings to merchants and cut costs for merchants significantly. We are growing on this front, making merchants happy and saving them money every day. This is how we are competing today. Even our partners cannot price as low as we do.
The second step which is happening in parallel, but takes a longer time, is moving to digital currency and cryptocurrency. In time, this will create a drastic drop in the cost for merchants. This is longer term because it changes the behaviour of both consumers and merchants. The world is moving this way and it will make the transfer of money cheap, immediate, and global.
We’re working to build an exceptional company that is loved by our customers and employees, being guided by strong values and working principles.
Why customers and employees stay at Clearly Payments
Employees come to Clearly Payments for a friendly team where they can explore and learn how to lead and grow a business. They can learn all aspects of business from sales to finance. We help employees with that growth process. We put programs in place to incubate business ideas for employees to grow and even spin these ideas out into full businesses. We strive to be an operationally excellent company that results in amazing products and service for our customers.
Customers stay with Clearly Payments because they are no longer treated like a number, which is what you frequently get in the credit card processing industry. We put them and their business at the forefront. They get friendly and proactive service, along with simple products that work. Payments is the lifeblood of a company, integral to the company operations. Along the way, we help entrepreneurs and business leaders learn about payments, business operations, and growth.
Our turf
We're a team of North American payment experts in two of the most beautiful cities in the world, Vancouver in Canada and San Francisco (coming soon) in USA . We service all of North America and want to help your business grow, even across borders.
Team & talent
Great people are the core of a great business. We want attract people that are obsessively helpful and are willing to continually learn. They aspire to be entrepreneurs and business leaders.
We believe one of our biggest achievements will be the people at Clearly Payments that work together to help our customers.
Our aspirations
- To be recognized by our customers as the best payments provider in the industry
- To become the number one recommended payments processor in the world
- To create a work environment so rewarding that we attract the best employees
Culture
Company culture is the about values and attitudes of employees in the business. A culture contributes to achieving a great business, but it can also hinder it. Culture is the only truly unique aspect of a business - products, branding, and services can be replicated. Culture is a complex formula, like DNA. That's why we put so much effort towards it.
We believe that culture is the collection of values, behaviours, and incentives of an organization. Working within an organization with a strong culture will help you be more successful. At our core, we aim to have radical transparency. It weaves through each of our company values.
Our values
- Super friendly: to each other and our customers
- Straight up: tell it like it is and don't let things linger
- Bias for action: keep it moving forward
- Humble: we always have something to learn
- Independent thinkers: don't be afraid to go against the grain
Working principles
- You inspire people by doing your best
- Continually listen, learn, and teach
- Focus on 80/20 (use the Pareto Principle)
- Don't get sucked into time traps: understand Parkinson's Law.
- Put more energy on opportunities, not problems