Ezypay Chief Executive takes a new approach to member billing

James Foster, Chief Executive of Ezypay, has outlined how the billing leader is looking to move forward, dedicating its attention to offering world class subscription payments through industry leading partnerships.

Announcing that the company is to retire its iConnect360 product, he advises “after several years of careful consideration, our decision really came down to two factors.

“Firstly, focus, we want to continue to be seen as a world class recurring and subscription payments provider so retiring our iConnect360 product means we can dedicate all our attention to improving our billing capabilities.

“Secondly, to deliver ‘best of breed’ outcomes. When we launched iConnect360, we felt there were not that many great alternatives in the market. In the seven years since, we have seen many new software providers catering to the industry.

“By partnering with them, we believe that our customers can get the best of both worlds – great membership management software and world class subscription payments.

“We are pleased to have formed partnerships with a broad range of solution providers that offer a wide spectrum of functionality and industry experience. Our partners include well established players in the local market, and exciting new entrants looking to establish themselves with exciting offerings.”

At the time of this conversation, these partners include ClientConnect, EZeMember, goXpro, GymMaster, InFlux, Legend, Membr, OneFitStop and Perfect Gym.

With a long-term commitment to the health and fitness industry - Ezypay was founded by George Holman in 1996 while he was still running his gym in Sydney - Foster advises “health and fitness is where Ezypay began and still represents a significant part of our business.

“We continue to invest in our product to support the specific needs of this industry and ensure our team includes experience in the industry so that we can deliver the best outcomes for our customers.”

Commenting on what he sees as setting Ezypay apart from other billing providers in the market, Foster adds “we believe the fact we only focus on subscription and recurring revenue solutions gives us a great advantage over the many generic payment gateway and processing providers in the market.

“We have a range of technology and business processes that ensures our customers can significantly improve their collection rates, in an easy and effective manner. We also believe our approach provides a superior end customer experience – especially as we believe it is much better to ensure a successful payment, then chasing down a ‘debt’.

“Our local payment processing capabilities across so many countries in the Asia Pacific region is also unique and means that customers that use our solution can be confident we will be able to grow with them.

“We have also made a significant investment in our flexible billing platform and we are seeing our partners be able to have a much more customised integration with us, meaning they can provide a richer solution to their customers.

“Also, we are still a privately owned Australian based company and we believe that means we can provide a personalised service to better understand our customers’ requirements.”

Recalling George Holman’s foundation of the business, Foster recalls “George specifically formed the business to help companies like his to collect recurring payments from their customers. After successful growth in Australia, we entered the New Zealand market in 2006, built and launched our gym membership software product - iConnect360 - in 2012 and we are now actively billing in nine countries across the Asia Pacific region.

As for his own history with Ezypay, Foster adds “I joined Ezypay in July 2017 to run our Sales and Marketing teams and, after a transition period where I was our Chief Operating Officer, I formally became CEO in July 2018.

“My background is in technology and I have worked for software and services businesses with global and Asia-Pacific focuses - which fits well with Ezypay’s current focus and future direction.”

Looking forward he sees exciting changes coming to the industry, commenting “we are increasingly seeing the need for businesses to focus on the customer experience.

“The industry has, sometimes unfairly, being perceived as taking advantage of customers and we see this very much changing. People are expecting a much higher level of contact and engagement from the businesses they deal with. The rise of smaller, boutique studios and gym models is an example of this.

“Security and compliance are also very much top of mind for businesses and customers alike. I find it quite scary that there are still businesses recording their customers credit card details on pieces of paper and putting them in a drawer somewhere.

“In terms of payment trends, we are seeing quite a lot of change and evolution. Gone are the days when customers had a single bank account that their salary was deposited into. With the rise of debit cards, customers have a lot more control over where their money lives. This presents a unique challenge for businesses wanting to maximise their collection rates and is something we are very much focused on. We are closely involved with the rise of new and non-traditional payment methods - such as NPP, Digital Wallets, QR based payments and the like - and continue to develop our solution to keep pace with these changes.”

He concludes that these partnerships are a large focus for the business moving forward, noting "it is all about offering our billing capabilities to the market at large.”

Click here to contact Ezypay via their entry in the Australasian Leisure Management Supplier Directory.

Main image shows Ezypay's George Holman (left) and James Foster.