Shop Talk: FreedomPay settling quickly into SaaS transaction market

Having spent than 20 years in the electronic transaction industry, Sam Bellamy has done his time.
With those two decades of experience, he’s helping pushing Wayne-based transaction firm FreedomPay in a new direction.
And what he’s amazed about today includes a much smaller time investment: fractions of a second.
The privately-held company, which provides payment and transaction solutions to small and mid-sized businesses with a Software as a Service platform, has six patents pending for its processing technology, which can provide real-time feedback at the point-of-sale for companies with thousands of products in their inventory.
“It’s massive amounts of information analyzed in milliseconds,” Bellamy says.

With the company’s new FreeWay platform, clients are able to capture data beyond credit card information. Payments can be tagged with each line item, including SKUs and more, so companies can in real-time perform analysis for promotional activity.
The company’s hosted model is served online and it markets that affordable delivery method to companies that don’t have the capital to make large expenditures on sophisticated point-of-sale technology.
The model is common to the storefront retail world — big chain stores are able to provide instant coupons to valued customers. But that kind of investment in information technology infrastructure is costly, Bellamy says.
With FreeWay, small to mid-sized businesses are able to take advantage of the same offerings.
In June, the company announced that it passed 1,000 clients for its SaaS payment and transaction platform FreeWay.
The venture capital-backed firm has 35 employees and its “growing quickly,” Bellamy says, since it first launched in 2000.
Bellamy joined the FreedomPay team in spring 2007 as Chief Information Officer, as the company planned to move beyond the prepaid space that it was most involved, working with organizations like University of the Arts, where the company provides RFID badges to students for purchases.
In 2008 it became a registered credit card processor, giving clients wider transaction offerings, and giving the company its greater scope.
Since, FreeWay has been popular with FreedomPay’s manufacturing clients, who sell things like agricultural construction equipment and chemical supplies. In the past, those smaller organizations had no way of providing promotions to customers effectively at the point-of-sale given the large number of wholesalers they’re connecting customers with. With the automated software, those retail outlets can offer manufacturer promotions based on particular line items.
“In the medical equipment space, people are trying to extend the life of their equipment, so they’re buying more parts. Manufacturers are finding ways [like with special promotions] to do revenue lift,” Bellamy says.
And their finding ways with FreedomPay to do it quickly.