PFC Payment Solutions moves on up

GREELEY – A Greeley startup in the financial services sector is the latest to go regional, with plans for a new headquarters facility at Crossroads Plaza in Loveland.

PFC Payment Solutions LLC was founded by Ken Salazar – no relation to the U.S. Senator – in 2004. The company provides electronic payment services, from hardware to processing, for small retail businesses. Salazar borrowed the name, and some of its recognition, from father-in-law Michael Shoop’s Professional Finance Co., a 100-plus-year-old debt resolution firm also based in Greeley. While the companies recommend customers to each other, that is where the ties end.

“It’s a completely separate and individual entity,” Salazar said.

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The separation is about to extend to the physical realm, too.

Salazar has rented space from Shoop since PFC Payment Solutions started as a one-man show with a Northern Colorado customer base. Now, the company employs around 50, boasts a national client list and is bursting at the seams in its 2,300 square feet in northwest Greeley.

Salazar recently closed on 2.3 acres at Crossroads Plaza in Loveland and plans to build a 15,000-square-foot facility to house the burgeoning business. Ground will break in the next few weeks, with construction slated for completion by the end of the year. Salazar said the company will move its 40 employees from Greeley and plans to hire about 100 more in the next year or so.

PFC Payment Solutions has grown by about 200 percent during the past year. The firm has about 3,500 clients, fewer than half of which are based in Colorado. It provides merchants with retail credit card machines, software and processing, gift card services and security compliance for electronic payments. Salazar said the company is mainly focused on Tier 4 merchants – those that perform fewer than 1 million transactions in a year.

“Our bread-and-butter are mom-and-pop shops,” he said. “I saw a great opportunity to help merchants become more profitable.”

Credit processing fees are around 3 percent of a merchant’s sales. If a retailer process $100,000 in credit and debit sales in a month, the cost of those sales is around $3,000. PFC can typically reduce processing costs by about 18 percent.

New technology on horizon

Cost is only a part of the equation though, Salazar explained. He said that what PFC Payment prides itself on is customer service. The firm assigns a relationship manager to each client and works to keep the most up-to-date products and services available.

“There’s a lot of new technology on the horizon,” Salazar said. “We like to stay educated and on the cutting edge of what’s going on.”

During the next few years, the company is looking into adding radio frequency transaction technology, which is already used heavily in Europe, as well as cell phone payment technology known as an e-wallet.

In addition to expanding staff and offerings, the company is also looking to expand its customer base internationally. Salazar said PFC Payment Solutions is likely to break into the Canadian market in the next 12 months. Mexico, due to some governmental regulations, will take a bit longer – perhaps a few years.

What cannot wait, for PFC Payment Solutions, is a new workplace.

“We’ve run out of room,” Salazar said. “(With the new building), we can really ramp up to the next level.”

Time was of the essence, according to Kevin Brinkman, managing broker for Brinkman Partners. Brinkman represented Troy Peterson, the developer and seller, in the transaction with Salazar.

“It’s one of his priorities to get the building up as quickly as possible,” Brinkman said.

Regional theme

The timing issue could have made a cheaper, already-built facility a more attractive option. Salazar did a fair amount of looking before settling on the site.

“Quite frankly, I was trying to stay in the Greeley area,” he said, since most of the company’s employees live there. However, Salazar said he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get in early on an area where he sees a lot of excitement.

Brinkman said that regionalism has been a common theme for many companies looking for expansion. For PFC Payment Solutions, the regional pull will be for employees. For others, it is for clients. For example, Brinkman recently worked on Denis Gonyon’s new plastic surgery center in the 2534 development. Gonyon was previously located in Greeley.

“I think everyone realizes it’s more of a regional economy,” Brinkman said.

In a show of regionalism, Salazar tapped Fort Collins-based Brinkman Partners as the general contractor and planner for the building and Greeley’s Design One Consultants Inc. as the architect.

“I don’t see it as Greeley, Loveland, Fort Collins,” Salazar said. “I see it as Northern Colorado.”