Say goodbye to the Merchant Warehouse and hello to the new Cayan, as the Boston-based independent sales organization and technology provider changes its branding to fit the changes it has made to its business model.
Cayan will still sign up merchants for transaction services, but the company will emphasize transaction processing through its Genius platform, payments gateway and other offerings, said CEO Henry Helgeson.
"I went into meetings and had to spend 10 minutes explaining what we do because the name no longer fit the company," Helgeson said in a phone interview. "People often thought we were an equipment supplier."
The company chose the Cayan name because no one attaches any other meaning to it, he said, noting that the word serves as an empty vessel that can accommodate changes in the company.
The branding change marks the culmination a two-year process that shifted the company from an acquirer with technology on the periphery to a business with technology at its core, he said.
Part of the emphasis during that transition focused on processing mobile payments, Helgeson. He declined to comment on whether Cayan is becoming a full-service transaction processor that doesn't rely on third-party processing functions.
During the period of change, the company's tech staff increased six-fold and now numbers about 100. Altogether, the company employs a total of 350 people.
Amid the tech-oriented changes, the company opened a Belfast, Northern Ireland, office with a staff of about 80.
The Genius platform that the company now offers is designed to process payments in any form. Besides using the platform itself, the company offers it to other ISOs.
To get out the word on the rebranding, Cayan operated "war room" with a dozen staffers posting the news on social media and through email messages and phone calls to affiliates, partners, ISOs, agents and other resellers, Helgeson said.
