Celero was created with America’s small and midsize businesses in mind. From the beginning, we’ve focused on supporting them in ways that go above and beyond payment processing. As Executive Vice President of Sales at Celero, I feel an immense responsibility to our merchants—not only to provide them with bundled, user-friendly payment systems, but also to position our company as a true ally.
As a recent example, when the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns first swept the U.S. last year, many of our merchants were thrust into survival mode. There were a lot of things we could have chosen to do, or not do, in response. Ultimately, we decided to go on the offensive for our merchants by providing COVID-friendly solutions to help keep them afloat. From contactless payments to E-commerce, we offered all the tools our merchants needed to operate safely and efficiently during the pandemic.
We began reaching out proactively to offer pivoting strategies. We built a COVID-19 Resource Center for our merchant partners and any small business owners who needed it, regardless of whether we worked with them or not. At Celero, we pride ourselves on driving profitability through a culture of high-performance—but in that moment, it wasn’t about the money. We just knew that we had to get those resources out there to those who needed them.
Although many of our partners felt stuck in survival mode, our ultimate goal was to get them back to a point of not merely surviving, but thriving. That’s a tough challenge during a global pandemic, but many of our merchants were able to bounce back quickly, and we’re happy to report that they’re doing much better across the board now.
It goes back to a feeling of personal responsibility that my teammates and I feel toward our merchants. It motivates us to do the right thing, always, even when that means working many late nights and early mornings through times of crisis. It’s easy to be an ally to merchants when the economy is booming and times are good. But true allies stand by merchants through periods of economic crisis, pandemics, and any other hardships that may come their way.
So many players in our industry act out of reactivity rather than strategy and thinking ahead. We take a different approach at Celero, where our promise to partners is that we will remain ahead of the curve and provide revenue-driving opportunities to our merchants—often opportunities that they themselves didn’t know about.
We promise a lot to our partners, and there’s a tremendous responsibility to follow through on that. Thankfully, with the power of the best team in fintech behind us, we’re able to deliver at an exceptionally high standard.