For fledgling and even growing adult sites, dealing with payment and billing is one of the biggest headaches a company can face. Finding a long-term solution can be a challenge, with so many billing and payment companies in the game, and each business having its own unique set of needs to be addressed.
OrbitalPay, LLC is one billing and payment company that has built a solid reputation in the adult industry. Formed on March 14, 2008, in Cypress, Calif., by Steven H. Bryson (founder and CEO), the company drew strength from its commendable customer service approach and unique billing solutions.
For anyone unfamiliar with his brainchild, Bryson was quick to nail down what, exactly, his company offers: “OrbitalPay, LLC is a PCI-compliant internet payment gateway and billing company. OrbitalPay, LLC offers fraud scrubbing and prevention, individualized descriptors on customer billing statements, access to your billing database, along with reliable, full-service features like live 24/7 billing support, feature-rich gateway services, comprehensive real-time reporting, industry-leading scrubbing tools that limit charge backs, integrated cascading billing, affiliate tools and so much more.”
Bryson had a vision of what his company could do for sites seeking the perfect billing resource: “The idea came as a result of years of watching merchants with third-party processors. While a select few do great work, most are off booking aggregation accounts whereby sales agents spoof the merchant into believing they have their own accounts or are in registered IPSP models. In order to counter this activity, we decided to offer all the best features of a third-party account, while maintaining daily deposits directly from the member bank to the merchant’s own bank account,” he said.
OrbitalPay distinguishes itself in many other ways, according to its founder, including excellent customer service, unique billing and payment resources, constant innovation and one key ingredient that Bryson believes many of his competitors are lacking.
“The thing that we do better than anyone else, which is the basic cornerstone of any relationship, is that we listen,” Bryson said. “This listening starts at the very beginning of the relationship, during the approval and setup process, and continues well through the entire relationship. It has the powerful benefit of placing our organization into a trusted advisory role for many of our clients, knowing that they will receive an honest opinion from us, and guidance on how to accomplish their objectives.”
Running a savvy company such as OrbitalPay requires a great deal of constant innovation, and Bryson is quick to emphasize that such innovation often springs from teamwork within his organization.
“While it could be said that I am the visionary behind the organization, I like to include all members of my team in the process. Whenever a new idea is ready to be discussed, we bring in lunch and assemble the team to have a roundtable discussion about the concept. For that period of time, I take off my CEO hat and we engage as colleagues to debate the concept. If the idea makes it through the roundtable, I will have my executive team review the newly minted ideas, and begin to construct a business plan for formal review and prioritization. This balance of free-flow creativity and disciplined analysis has proven to be very successful.”
“Our clients and partners have come to expect new ideas and creative solutions to create value, which has been a hallmark of our firm’s reputation,” he added.
Listening to customers, encouraging teamwork among executive staff, technological innovation—what other tricks does Bryson have up his sleeve to ensure OrbitalPay’s long-term success?
“We have made the decision to put the human relationship first. This takes many forms, but the most basic is having a real person answer the phone and make the connection with our clients. We also maintain streamlined access to the executive team for all of our stakeholders.”
Surely, like most companies today, the challenges of the economy have presented issues for OrbitalPay. Bryson, however, is confident about the future of his company and the stability of its ability to service clients in the long run.
“Like all organizations, we are faced with the changing landscape of the industry. Over the last 10 years, we have seen the increasing pace of evolution and changing delivery methods for digital entertainment services. We do have an advantage over many of our competitors in reacting to this.GET [Global Electronic Technology, OrbitalPay’s parent company] has a diverse portfolio of clients that have adopted a wide range of new media strategies and have found ways to successfully monetize and protect their intellectual property.”
Especially in these tough times, Bryson believes there is more the industry can do to help others. Even while helming a successful company, he celebrates his success in a laudable way: He gives back.
“At one time, I would have said that [achievement] was seeing GET grow into a profitable organization, or that [success] was monetary in nature. However, my greatest success today is being fortunate enough to help others in need. We, as an industry, can and should do more for homeless and hungry children wherever they may be.”
This article originally appeared in the September 2009 issue of AVN.
