Innovating in Payment Technology: Plimus CEO Hagai Tal (Part 3)

Sramana: What kind of private equity investor were you able to bring in to help with Plimus?

Hagai Tal: Susquehanna Growth Equity, which is a private equity group, made the investment. They are based in Philadelphia. They bought 50% of the company at a $40 million valuation. We used that money to hire a management team, updated the technology, and put solid business processes in place. We also made a lot of expansive hires in sales and marketing. I drew on my experience from all of the companies I have ever been involved with in the past to set our overall strategy.

I also had a lot of background in the payment space, so I knew what we had to change in order to get better terms, better fees, and a better conversion. We put a solid strategy in place for Plimus. Our strategy was based on the flexibility and openness of the platform. We established a long-term vision of being able to provide an open solution to the checkout payment solution market much like Salesforce provides a platform solution. To achieve that goal, we created a lot of APIs and developed a flexible platform.

Sramana: There are a lot of things going on in that space. Are you essentially offering an e-commerce checkout page similar to Volusion?

Hagai Tal: We are dealing with any virtual or nonphysical product. Our solution can power a subscription-based business or a single event. We do not deal with physical goods. We focus on use cases that require a merchant to have a long-term relationship with the buyer. They could collect $10 dollars from a client and then let them purchase 1 dollar games at a time over a period of a year.

We have the ability to collect money in currencies worldwide through our merchant account. A lot of other players have solutions around the money but they never actually touch the money. We touch the money. We have the ability to monitor complex relationships with Visa and MasterCard for things like chargeback’s, refunds, and other issues that merchants often don’t know how to handle. We can also create an e-voice and we provide an entire structure for finance professionals to help them handle their companies taxes and manage reconciliations.

Sramana: Who are your competitors in this space?

Hagai Tal: Our closest competitor is Digital River, but they are in the software segment only. We are more flexible so we are able to handle a lot more online content like IPTV. We have a lot of broadcasters who like the idea of giving one week for free and then allowing paid streaming to customers. We enable that transaction to take place. We don’t see Digital River in mobile or digital TV spaces.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Innovating in Payment Technology: Plimus CEO Hagai Tal
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