Kyle
TechStars Co-Founder & CEO David Cohen
David Cohen, the co-founder and CEO of Techstars, the largest accelerator program in the world has recently invested $150,000 in Advocharge. Advocharge establishes credit card processing rates at a substantial discount from the rates typically found from similar companies.
Advocharge’s CEO Mark Tracy said that they are able to allow substantially lower rates because they are compensated 10% from the savings a client company receives from the difference in rates.
“A number of the TechStars businesses are currently working with AdvoCharge and have realized significant savings – as much 80-90 percent over the fees they had been paying to their previouscredit card processor. On top of the savings, our TechStars companies are really happy with the service and support they receive,” said Cohen.
One TechStars graduate, Orbotix, the makers of the Sphero Ball, utilize the services of AdvoCharge. Their VP of Operations, Jim Booth said:
“Rate is not everything with merchant services, but the support we get from AdvoCharge has been tremendous. When you couple that with the very low rate they established for us, we couldn’t be happier.”
AdvoCharge’s CEO, Mark Tracy, stated, “We are thrilled to be working with David. Through TechStars and his other investments, David has learned a great deal about what makes startups successful and has a tremendous network. We’re excited to learn from him, to leverage the relationships he’s developed and to positively impact those contacts.”
More after the break
Tracy elaborated, “Our goal with all our customers is to keep credit card processing costs to a minimum and keep support consistent and high quality. The larger merchant service industry seems to try to take as much money as they possibly can from individual merchants and they’ve created a very antagonistic relationship between card processor and business owner.”
“One of our core beliefs is that if our merchants are successful, we are successful, so we do everything in our power to support them – the ‘Advo’ in AdvoCharge is for advocate and we stand behind that concept,” said Tracy. “That’s why our merchants save on average 72 percent over what they had been paying in fees to their previous credit card processor – we even guarantee that we will save business owners money! And it’s why our business has grown largely by word of mouth. With David’s investment, we will more actively cultivate our relationships both in and out of the tech space and develop the tools and processes to help our merchants be even more successful.”
This investment into Advocharge is a win win all around. With Cohen backing Advocharge it insures that TechStars companies that need credit card processing will continue to get great rates and the superb customer service that Booth spoke of.
Linkage:
Check out Advocharge here
More on TechStars Here
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