Startup Check-In: Amaryllis In Full Bloom

Unlike its namesake flower, startup payment platform Amaryllis did not bloom quickly or easily. It did, however, do so dramatically in pursuit of its goal to redefine “what good looks like” in the market.

The startup was founded in 2011, but it was not until 2015 that it began working on its end-to-end third-party payments platform that is gaining traction today. That platform has recently been white labeled by one of the top five merchant acquirers in the world.

Amaryllis crafts modular solutions for payment facilitators (PayFacs) and merchant acquirers, which can be used in any system serving multiple sellers and buyers and implemented in whole or in part. There are modules for onboarding submerchants and managing fraud and risk, all the way through to settlement, reconciliation and reporting.

When Amaryllis first asked now-CEO Mark Bishopp to become an advisor 18 months ago, Bishopp said the startup was “on to something” but not quite there yet. Now, he believes the company has arrived and is ready to offer services on the level of brands like WePay, Stripe and Braintree.

So, when the executive team asked him to come on as CEO in July, Bishopp was more than happy to throw his lot in with theirs — especially since Bank of America Merchant Services, where he was holding a senior leadership position at the time, was not ready to make the Amaryllis solution a priority, despite loving the startup’s work and agreeing with Bishopp that it was something the market sorely needed.

Bishopp said a third-party solution was needed because acquirers weren’t developing their own in the robust way it needed to happen. As a result, thousands of global marketplaces were marrying buyers and sellers without the help of banks and financial institutions — see Uber, Amazon, Etsy and Bluesnap, among others.

Last week, PYMNTS named Amaryllis among its “Payments Powering Platforms Top 10” in its Payment Powering Tracker. This week, the company is officially launching its re-branded website and hosting its first-ever CEO Chat at 1:30 p.m. EST on Thursday, Oct. 19. The 90-minute chat will provide an opportunity to ask the tough questions about the platform and market, particularly pertaining to this week’s announcement between Chase and WePay, Bishopp said.