Consider a distributor selling a box of replacement parts. The buyer enters a card number. A screen says approved. To the buyer, the transaction is over. To the distributor, several questions remain. Will the money arrive in time? Which invoice does it close? Did the transaction carry the details needed to qualify for a better processing rate?
This is a hypothetical order, but a useful way into Merchant e-Solutions, now known as MerchantE. The company works in the space between accepting a payment and making it useful to a business. Its expertise includes acquiring, processing, gateway technology and the software connections that keep those jobs talking.
- The customer: merchants and software partners, with a particular focus on mid-market B2B.
- The proposition: connect payment acceptance with processing and the work behind it.
- The important wrinkle: Fortis bought the NetSuite payments division in 2024.
01 / ORIGINThe roadmap that disappeared
The story begins with a disagreement about what a payment business should become. Sharif Bayyari had led Bank of America Merchant Services. In 1999, he and other executives left to build Merchant e-Solutions. Jim Aviles, a co-founder and former operating chief, later described the bank moving into cost reduction and cancelling product-development projects.
“all of your product development projects have been cancelled”
JIM AVILES, RECALLING THE BANK’S DECISION
THE GREEN SHEET, NOVEMBER 2009
The first thing to give way, in that account, was permission to keep building. Their response was to own more of the machinery. The resulting business developed proprietary processing and gateway technology. That background helps explain its enduring pitch: fewer handoffs between the people accepting a transaction and the people responsible for moving it along.
02 / THE MACHINERYThe payment has several lives
A gateway receives payment instructions. Processing handles the messages that authorize and complete a transaction. Acquiring connects the merchant to card acceptance and settlement. MerchantE combines front- and back-end processing with direct connectivity to major card brands. A software partner can build payment acceptance into its own product without constructing that entire system.
That puts MerchantE among payment providers a business might compare with Stripe, Adyen or a bank-connected processor. Its particular case rests on the infrastructure it operates and its B2B experience. A familiar payment button alone cannot demonstrate either. The revealing questions concern transaction data, settlement, integration and who handles a problem when something goes astray.
Its tools cover different levels of ambition. Hosted Payments gives a merchant a payment page operated by MerchantE. Gateway APIs let developers connect more directly. Tokenization substitutes a reference for sensitive card details, while account-updater services help maintain stored credentials when cards change. Physical acceptance sits alongside online payments rather than requiring an entirely separate business relationship.
03 / THE DETAILSThe small print does useful work
MerchantE Invoice offers an especially concrete example. A business can send invoices or quotes by email or text, attach payment links, schedule reminders and inspect receivables. The product’s documentation even specifies that merchants cannot automatically enroll customers in Text to Pay or AutoPay. The customer controls that choice. A convenient workflow still needs consent.
Then there are the unglamorous fields: tax, product codes, quantities, freight. For eligible corporate and purchasing-card transactions, passing additional Level II or Level III data can help qualify for lower interchange. The saving depends on the card, transaction and acceptance method. A distributor cannot simply switch on a feature and assume every payment becomes cheaper.
MerchantE earns through payment-processing fees and applicable services. Its Adobe Commerce listing describes customized pricing. For a buyer, the useful comparison is a written total: processing charges, software, devices and contractual obligations, assessed against the work the integration removes. A low-looking rate says little about an employee still matching payments by hand.
04 / CASH FLOWTwo clocks, one sale
The same distinction appears in funding. In March 2021, MerchantE launched a Same Day Funding option for pre-qualified merchants, describing access within an hour of closing a batch. Its launch terms specified a 9 p.m. Eastern cutoff, a $100,000 daily limit and a flat fee per batch rather than a percentage of the batch value.
Those conditions are part of the product. A merchant outside the eligibility rules cannot budget around the headline. The principle travels well beyond this company: measure a payment by when the business can use the proceeds, and price the speed separately. Approval time and spending time are different clocks.
05 / CHANGING HANDSFollow the division, not just the name
Infrastructure also explains the buyers. Cielo agreed to pay $670 million for Merchant e-Solutions in 2012, seeking capabilities including e-commerce, mobile payments and back-office automation. Integrum agreed to acquire the business in February 2022, then sold it to Opn that November. Opn wanted U.S. market access and a processing back end that complemented its Asian payments business.
Integrum described changing the leadership team, redirecting sales efforts and refocusing technology investment during its ownership. Its founders attributed the decision to sell to market conditions and progress against their plan. That is the seller’s stated rationale; a quick exit alone cannot tell a reader whether a product worked.
The numbers need their dates. Integrum’s February 2022 announcement reported more than $17 billion in payment volume across 13,000 merchants. The larger figures published with the Opn deal described the combined businesses. Treating those numbers as a current MerchantE customer count would quietly change their meaning.
In July 2024, Fortis acquired MerchantE’s NetSuite payments division, whose integration history reached back to 2004. Fortis said most of that team joined it. For someone following an old software recommendation, that detail changes the buying conversation: establish which company now supplies, supports and develops the service.
There is a practical habit to borrow here. Before choosing a processor, follow one representative order through approval, invoice, settlement and deposit. Include a refund. Ask the people doing the reconciliation to watch. MerchantE’s story becomes most useful at that scale: one payment, examined closely enough to reveal all the work hiding behind it.