A St. Petersburg-based financial technology company has processed over $1 billion in payments and is now rapidly expanding internationally.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joseph Cover, CEO of 1PriceSwipes<\/a>, believes he can\u00a0\u201ctake a bite out of\u201d Stripe\u2019s<\/a> payment processing business. He and his wife, Vicky, co-founded the startup in 2017.<\/p>\n The husband-and-wife duo have embraced innovation and believe their approach will disrupt the current payment services ecosystem. Cover attributed the company\u2019s recent success to \u201coperating with a very high level of integrity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPayment acceptance is an unregulated industry, which is great in a lot of ways,\u201d Cover said. \u201cBut it also allows a lot of guys in my position to promise and then underdeliver, and kind of get away with it. I didn\u2019t like the feel of that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Merchants do not pay any upfront costs to use 1PriceSwipes devices. The subscription-based service also eliminates processing fees.<\/p>\n Local clients include The Burg Bar & Grill and Mi Carreta Restaurant & Bakery. According to the 1PriceSwipes website, the platform has saved over 1,000 business owners more than $15 million in processing costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cover launched the company in Cocoa Beach before moving to Tampa and, eventually, St. Petersburg. He \u201cfell in love with the area\u201d and realized the number of local businesses presented an opportunity for exponential growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI quickly saw the light,\u201d Cover said. \u201cThe majority of my work has been done here in the bay area.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He noted that \u201cword gets around really fast about how you conduct yourself\u201d in Tampa Bay. While Cover realizes it sounds clich\u00e9, he said putting the customer first and doing \u201ceverything in your power to over-deliver\u201d led to the couple earning a \u201cgood name in a great area.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Cover recently partnered with Amsterdam-based Adyen<\/a>, a global payment platform, to expand internationally. Businesses in over 190 countries can now use 1PriceSwipes.<\/p>\n However, Cover reiterated that most of the company\u2019s support and success stems from Tampa and St. Pete. \u201cThat\u2019s really our bread and butter, and it will continue to be so.\u201d<\/p>\n Cover said his desire to compete with Stripe led to the recent expansion. The company boasts millions of clients, including Google and Amazon.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYes, it\u2019s an audacious approach to go ahead and try to jump in and take their business, but we\u2019re doing it right now,\u201d Cover said. \u201cIt\u2019s such an abundant business.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He plans to \u201ccast a very wide net\u201d and believes 1PriceSwipes can earn \u201csome much bigger accounts.\u201d Cover said he is \u201creally working hard to put the right people in place so we can scale up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The overarching goal is to offer a product for every type of business. Cover also stressed the importance of surrounding himself with \u201creally smart people.\u201d<\/p>\n He traveled to the Netherlands to meet with Adyen\u2019s leadership and said onboarding the technology has allowed him to \u201cconcentrate on talent and opportunity.\u201d Cover has six salaried employees and a \u201ccouple hundred\u201d independent contractors nationwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo, it\u2019s not hard to scale,\u201d he continued. \u201cAll we have to do is offer something conducive to their (contractor\u2019s) needs. They want to make money, and they want to make it passively, and they want to be with a company with no barrier to entry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Cover noted that a new point-of-sale product allows 1PriceSwipes to process over 100 cryptocurrencies and 20 stablecoins. A Ferrari dealership\u2019s repair shop in Fort Lauderdale is a recent client.\u00a0<\/p>\n While he initially \u201cwasn\u2019t much of a believer\u201d in digital currency, Cover expects more and more people to make purchases with crypto in the coming years. \u201cEven when it starts, it\u2019s not going to wipe out Visa or Mastercard or traditional processing, but I do think it\u2019s coming.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Cover also has a burgeoning relationship with 360 Eats<\/a>. The local nonprofit rescues food<\/a> that would have gone to waste and repurposes it into nutritious, chef-prepared meals, served at no cost to residents facing food insecurity.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI want to take a portion of our profits from every single account we have and allocate it to them,\u201d Cover said. \u201cAnd I thought to myself, once I can get going on this, I think I can help him scale more donations by getting in touch with other fintech companies that I know nationally. I just feel like it\u2019s time for me to step up to the plate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A St. Petersburg-based financial technology company has processed over $1 billion in payments and is now rapidly expanding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-66985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}