Bootstrapping a Credit Card Processing Business: Payscape CEO Adam Bloomston (Part 1)

Adam has scaled a very simple business diligently, systematically. Have a look at how.

Sramana Mitra: I want to go to the very beginning of your personal story, where are you from, where were you born, raised, and what kind of background?

Adam Bloomston: I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and studied at the University of Alabama. I moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 2000.

Sramana Mitra: What about school and stuff? Where did you do? What did you do?

Adam Bloomston: I was an average student in high school and in college in Alabama where I got my undergraduate degree with a major in Advertising and minor in Marketing.

Sramana Mitra: And what year are we talking?

Adam Bloomston: I was in college during ’93 to ’97.

Sramana Mitra: Ok. So what happens after you come out of college?

Adam Bloomston: I owned a small screen printing business while in college. After coming out of college, I went to work with my father in his apparel business. I was even a party promoter at one point and had a bus business as well. I also got into credit card processing technology, which I am still doing today.

Sramana Mitra: At what point in this evolution was Payscape founded?

Adam Bloomston: 2004.

Sramana Mitra: Under what circumstances? Tell us more about the founding story of Payscape.

Adam Bloomston: Me and a friend thought that we can do credit card processing and sell that. We started selling door-to-door to business owners. We started Payscape for $500 apiece.

Sramana Mitra: And what specifically is the business of Payscape?

Adam Bloomston: So today, we are a technology company focused on integrated web-based payments. We help online businesses or SaaS technologies accept payments. We can turn Saas technologies into payment facilitators by giving them ways to accept credit, debit, ACH, or any non-cash payment. We still have a sales force that sells to integration partners and we focus on electronic invoicing and registrations.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do this a bit chronologically since it is an Entrepreneur Journey story. How did you get started? You said you started with $500 a piece, you and your co-founder. What specifically did you do when you started the company?

Adam Bloomston: So, we would wake up at every morning at 6 and start selling credit card processing door to door. We were going to business owners who were charging for accepting credit cards or we would ask them if they were even accepting credit cards. The sales cycle was not very long in our business. We would sometimes take just one meeting to close a deal.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Bootstrapping a Credit Card Processing Business: Payscape CEO Adam Bloomston
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