Growing up in Columbus, Ga., I knew little about the payment processing industry, but I had an anecdotal sense for its power as a job generator long before I began to be intrigued by its inner workings.
The city is the unlikely (some say) home of TSYS, a substantial player in the world of payments and a homegrown technology success story that emerged from the earliest days of banking software innovation and stuck around even after its size seemed to dictate moving to a larger tech hub.
For me, its impact was simultaneously ubiquitous and unknown. Everyone knew someone who worked at TSYS, or at one of its many offshoots, updating software for terminals or entering data into computers. Many of my baseball buddies had parents commuting to the nondescript technology building on J.R. Allen Parkway, or later to the gleaming riverside complex that would give hope to the city’s hard-up downtown. This company was big, and it had something to do with credit cards, but that’s where our understanding stopped. What all those people did behind those closed doors was anyone’s guess.
Reporting on business in Atlanta, I found that this blend of obvious importance and overwhelming ignorance pervades local thought on payments. Even those of us who have seen the necessity and vitality of the sector in Atlanta fail to understand the interplay among the web of actors that make a credit card or mobile payment transaction work. Because it’s intangible, and because the brands that are so crucial to consumption so often don’t face consumers, payment processing sometimes fades into the background.
Not anymore. With the launch of the American Transaction Processors Coalition in Atlanta in April 2014, the industry sounded a clarion call, a salvo against the perceived indifference of legislators and economic developers. No longer would an industry that has almost 10 times the statewide economic impact of the “Hollywood of the South” and nearly double that of the life sciences sector play second fiddle to “sexier” industries. As we watched this awakening unfold, it became evident that the timing was right to provide a snapshot of an industry that has moved from the shadows to the spotlight in Atlanta’s international reputation.
The below report is just that: A quick glance at topics like the historical development of payments expertise in Atlanta from 1960s on, the industry’s promise as an international “calling card” for the city’s recruitment efforts and its potential for helping build out Atlanta’s budding tech sector. It’s already strong in health care IT, cybersecurity and mobility, industries that are underpinned by and interwoven with financial technology. We think the fruit of our journalistic labor is informative, but the biggest revelation was how much more we have to learn about this giant hiding in plain sight.