Credit Card Authorization Software Generates $2 Million In New Business

Anyone who's ever been to a trade show knows that a lot of hard work and money are put into the event to make it successful. According to Ed Mahoney, president of Registration Unlimited, a San Jose, CA-based company dealing with registrations for technology trade shows, his business has increased revenue by $2 million. His company's success can be attributed, in part, to installing credit card authorization software by Tellan Software.

Registration Unlimited handles technical conferences on behalf of large corporations like Oracle and SAP. This includes pre-registration over the phone and e-mail, and on-site registrations for tradeshows with 20,000 or less attendees. The company has 25 full-time workers and a group of 30 to 40 telephone operators recording credit card payment from conference attendees. When a conference has ended, Registration Unlimited must financially reconcile the event, making sure all attendees have paid. The closer the company comes to reconciling, the better chance they have of being hired for another conference.

Processing Financial Data Was Hard
Two years ago when the company was selected to do the Oracle OpenWorld trade show, financial reconciliation was a major aspect. When attendees registered by phone or fax, Registration Unlimited used the VeriFone system to process financial data. Credit card information was recorded and sent in for authorization overnight, since there was no way to process the credit card information instantaneously.

According to Karis Takiya, Registration Unlimited's research and development project manager, half of the attendees at Oracle OpenWorld had a balance due. It was tough to get them to respond if their credit card was denied. Sometimes it would take two to three e-mails and three or four phone calls just to get a person to respond so other payment arrangements could be made. Registration Unlimited relied on CyberCash to keep track of its payments from the Internet, but the reconciliation process was too cumbersome.

Reconciliation for Oracle OpenWorld took four months to finish. "We also used the VeriFone system during on-site registration at a huge conference," Takiya explains. "Attendees who hadn't paid had to wait in line until a registrar wrote the confirmation number and name on a little slip of paper." After a major conference, the registration company could have 300 or 400 little receipts to process, assuming the registrars wrote the confirmation number and name legibly.

Moving To PC-Based Authorization
Takiya first heard of Tellan Software through Tellan's president and founder, Donald Neff, at a technology conference. Conveniently enough, Tellan, a 20-employee company, is also based in San Jose. After a few lengthy conversations with Neff, who started Tellan in 1993, the decision was made to switch to PC-based credit card authorization. Tellan Software installed PCAuthorize, PCAuthorize*Hub, MacAuthorize and MacAuthorize*Hub software, according to Jenny Wan-Mernyk, Tellan's vice president of marketing and sales. Installation took 30 minutes and actual training lasted an hour. It took Takiya two weeks to integrate the software with her custom-made databases. Now, she can pull up an attendee's transaction from last year if necessary. "Registration Unlimited is growing quite rapidly,'' says Wan-Mernyk. "Our software helps them grow with ease by handling the added demand for payment processing with less resources."

$2 Million Return On Investment
Only $7,000 has been spent on credit card authorization software – including the initial installation – according to Mahoney, Registration Unlimited's president.. The company has been able to generate a whole new business with the credit card authorization software. "We could have stayed with four or five employees and just chugged along," says Mahoney. "This change gave us the ability to jump into the major leagues. The fact that it is basically a paperless system adds even more value."

New Accounts Were Generated
"One of our biggest new clients uses us solely as a credit card processor," explains Takiya. "We also have a couple of other software companies that send us their credit card information to process their charges. This is great because we can process the information in batches, and it only takes 10 or 15 minutes. Then, we charge a percentage."

"Registration Unlimited is considering an upgrade to our direct connect product," says Mernyk, "which will give it a direct dedicated line into its payment processor. This will allow Registration Unlimited to process over 720 transactions per minute."

Financial Reconciliation Is Possible
Last year, Registration Unlimited handled Sapphire, the biggest user conference for SAP America. With the use of Tellan Software, over 13,000 people were registered and 12,900 payments had been processed by the time of the conference. Credit card authorizations alone from Sapphire took in $9 million and complete reconciliation took four weeks, compared with four months of post-conference reconciliation with Oracle OpenWorld. "If you can come in with very few balances due, these clients love you," says the company president.