It turns out that iBill is part of the planned InterCept Payment Solutions sale to IPS's chief executive officer and a management group. And it turns out that iBill is thrilled about the deal.
"We're very excited about the future and the synergies that are going to result," said iBill spokesman Al Dugan, who is InterCept's director of marketing communications.
InterCept, Inc. announced the sale earlier Feb. 11, and mentioned that the buyers included an unidentified third-party payment processing system. Told that that didn't suggest whether iBill might be the buyer or would be part of the IPS sale, Dugan said the third-party is putting up some financing for the deal but otherwise didn't want to be identified at this time.
"What I can tell you at this point is that the upper-level management team generated a desire to basically attempt a management buyout of IPS," Dugan said. "And that was accomplished by virtue of this signed letter of intent which took place (Feb. 10). There's a third-party business who's a transaction payment processor who's supplying a portion of the financing to get that deal done. Based on their desires we can't identify them at this point, because this is strictly a letter of intent expected to close by the end of the month."
But Dugan did say the deal has been received with some excitement among iBill management and staffers who anticipate the company being strengthened by the deal. Among other things, he said, the deal removes a shackle or three from iBill, which was bought by InterCept almost a year ago.
"I think one thing (the IPS sale) does is that it removes the constraints that we have in operating in the adult space as a public company," Dugan said. "I think that's one of the main advantages that we'll enjoy. (The other company) has services and products that compliment our services and products extremely well.
"We’ve been the subject of some rather unflattering articles that basically were negatively written, related to a lot of very notable public companies who somehow touch the adult entertainment business," he continued. "And we're looking forward to not having to I guess deal with that level of scrutiny from a public standpoint.
InterCept Payment Solutions is a division of three separate entities: iBill, an agent banking operation, and a payment processing company once known as EPX. Those three entities comprise the pending sale to IPS chief executive officer John Perry and an IPS management group.
"Our employees and our clients," Dugan said, "are accepting this news in the nature we would have hoped it would be accepted – very positive, setting the stage for future growth of this company."
