MPC SideHustle Podcast Interview With Merchant Advisory Services CEO JPBiamby

Erin O’Donnell 
Hi, everyone. I’m Erin O’Donnell. Welcome to MP. See side hustle. All right. We’re here today with JP beyond the JP Why don’t you give us your full name and and tell us a little bit about your company name.

JP Biamby 
My name is Jean-Phillippe Biamby. People also know me as JP Biamby for short. And my company is called Merchant Advisory Services.

Erin O’Donnell 
So what is your what? What does your company do? What products does your company sell? We

JP Biamby 
We sell products from the payments card industry to entrepreneurs and enterprise level businesses. So that means we offer services like merchant accounts ecommerce websites point of sale devices like the card terminals, the point of sale the countertop, to the ATMs you see on the wall.

Erin O’Donnell 
Wow. So that seems pretty extensive. Do you do more than what a typical merchant processor might do?

JP Biamby 
We’re more so like what is called an ISO and so we resell a lot of the products that the banks and the merchant service providers offer. So for example, we have a partnership with Clover connect that allows us to you know, provide a merchant with a clover device because the parent company Fiserv doesn’t do any selling of their point of sale. They look to ISOs like us to do that. So that’s a great question. We also work with other smaller organizations or salespeople that want to also resell those services and we give them the resources the infrastructure to do so. 

Erin O’Donnell 
Wonderful. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your customers demographic?

JP Biamby 
In the past, and currently the demographic profile of our customer is any business owner from an entrepreneur to an enterprise level organization. That currently accepts card payments from their customers or needs to in the future, if they don’t already, we now are starting to accept RFPs from companies to help them future proof their business by you know, upgrading their current payment ecosystem, you know, and just moving it in, you know, like a digital transformation and moving it into the future. So now, your customers can pay online or via ACH and to streamline hold our cake paper system of sending checks and you know, trying to transfer money.

Erin O’Donnell 
Yes. So it sounds like you’re really forward looking. You’re not really just we do this product, you really look at your customers needs, not only today but their future needs. And you know, you it seems like you have a lot to offer them.

JP Biamby 
Absolutely. We’re actually now trying to focus on the b2b space because we realized there’s so many business to business I guess they are kind of like corporate industries that are not seen by the everyday consumer. They’re behind the scenes. They’re not your retail restaurants who normally we’re going to start to target those businesses and help them move into the future when it comes to accepting payments because we all know what it’s like sometimes when you’re dealing with an old contractor and they still asking for a check or sending you invoices. We’re going to try to target some of those companies and help them move into the future with their payments acceptance. That’s

Erin O’Donnell 
a great idea because payments, especially in banking, you know, you have that FinTech connection there. There’s a lot of new products and services that I’m sure businesses don’t know about, that could make their processes so much easier. So that’s a really great service. Tell me about the industry and the size of your customers as well.

JP Biamby 
Okay, that’s a great question. When I started out this organization, I was just by myself and I didn’t want to have a large overhead I didn’t have a lot of customer support to offer. So I tried to target merchants that process a large volume every month so that way I can give them a high level of service. And then I can try to keep my margins low while still surviving.

So we target business owners that do more than like $100,000 per month in card processing. And we try to now target businesses that have more than one location. They might have multiple locations or multiple registers on the counter. So, you know, we try to deal with those businesses that have a little bit more of a complex problem than just hey, we need to accept card payments online on our website. If you’re just like a single entrepreneur and you want to sell your T shirts, then maybe Shopify or square is the best for you.

We deal with customer that’s kind of past that stage that’s outgrown those other systems and needs a you know more robust payment system and maybe it could be we want to connect our website to the point of sale in the store and want to make sure they all talk together. That’s one major challenge that we help a lot of business owners who are kind of siloed and just starting out.

Erin O’Donnell 
That sounds great. Well, thank you so much JP Do you have anything to add as we wrap up our interview?

JP Biamby 
Well, you could check us out online at merchant advisory services.com. And we have a blog there that has very interesting articles. And at the same time, you could find us on social media on Instagram where we are posting some content and you can find snippets of what you will see on our blog on our Instagram, which is the same @merchantadvisoryservices.

Erin O’Donnell 
Excellent & folks, if you have any questions, you can contact us via email at contact@mpcsidehustle.com, All right, JP, we’ll catch up with you again. Thank you.