About Freedom Merchants
Freedom Merchants provides payment technology solutions to enable businesses, Non-Profits, membership-organizations, and any person or organization to accept credit-card payments from their customers in an efficient, cost-effective way using every technology method available.
We are a Mission with a Company. Our Mission: To Help YOUR Business Get Paid Better, Faster, Simpler, Cheaper. Our Company: Freedom Merchants.
Website Checkout
Cell and Tablet Dongles
Ticketing and Event Software
Mobile Forms
E-commerce Shopping Carts
Recurring Billing Systems
Chip and Swipe Terminals
Point-of-Sale ('POS') Systems
Software Integrations
What makes us different?
We take care of the ENTIRE Checkout process by utilizing rapidly-deployed, highly-customized, completely mobile-friendly payment technology that we've developed internally and manage internally. We work WITH your web-developers, bookkeepers and IT staff to make their lives so much easier.
Every customer benefits from the ability to:
– Reduce lost Chargebacks due to lost paperwork
– Eliminate internal employee fraud
– Manage multi-location and multi-channel businesses most efficiently
– Data-mine in unique and customizable ways
– Receive total Underwriter Portability and load-balancing when needed
– Flexibly handle Currency options
– Have transaction data flowing directly to all the software you need (Accounting, Marketing, and more)
For the past 18 years we have been serving the needs of brand new business owners and those running their companies or organizations for years!
The Crew
Meet the people who make it all happen
Ben Prusky
CEO
With a distinguished track record in technology entrepreneurship, Ben has led Freedom Merchants since its founding in 2004. He is a leading industry advisor on all topics regarding credit card processing, integrated payments, Chip-and-Pin ("EMV") migration, Near-Field Communication ("NFC"), Internet gateways and related software, mobile payment technologies, PCI compliance matters, and wireless/wireline hardware terminal technology.
Previously Ben was on the executive management team and vice-president of finance & operations at SoftCoin, Inc., a Silicon Valley based precision-marketing software company (now part of You Technologies) that served most of the major consumer-packaged goods companies such as Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Heinz, Kraft, Pepsi and many others. Prior to that Ben co-founded Omnient Corporation, a web technology company with over 100 employees in two cities that developed web-based software for medium sized businesses. Ben has also worked in the Investment Banking division of Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., the investment firm Providence Capital, and briefly as an engineer at Lockheed Martin. Proficient in Japanese and a number of other languages, Ben also worked at Holon Corporation, a subsidiary of Omron Corporation, in Shiga, Japan.
Ben graduated as a Nelson Scholar from the University of Pennsylvania's M&T Program where he earned dual-degrees in Computer Systems Engineering from the School of Engineering and in Finance from the Wharton School. A dedicated environmentalist, Ben also serves on the Board of the Clean Air Council and works closely with large corporations and municipal organizations to help them improve their environmental footprint. When he's not working or advocating for the environment, Ben is usually playing some music or spending time with his wife Kelly and three kids.
Varun Aggarwal
CTO
Varun graduated from University of Waterloo in Canada with a degree in Computer Engineering. He brings extensive web development experience having worked at some of the most well known companies in the world including Qualcomm, Amazon, and CBS. He also has several years of start-up experience, from coding to design, to managing development teams, he has done it all. Varun oversees all technology-development and R&D for Freedom Merchants including managing the technology team. He previously served as the co-founder of iExperienceIt where he led the five-person team's Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Git, jQuery, and other application-development projects. When he's not doing coding (which isn't that often!), he enjoys playing soccer, tennis, and volleyball in the city.
Joe Rinato
VP of Operations
Joe oversees all aspects of the company's operations including risk-management, customer onboarding, funding operations, chargeback management, customer retention and everything else relating to running the company operationally. Most recently Joe served for seven years in the commercial banking area at Citibank in New York City. He's also spent time at M&T Bank, Provident Bank of Maryland and Webco, a Web LLC company. Joe graduated from William Patterson University with a degree in Business Administration, and he's a proud New Jersey native and an avid Giants and Yankees fan.
Hannah Kline
Sales & Operations
Hannah helps our new applicants understand the benefits of using Freedom Merchants and works with our applicants for the smoothest and fastest onboarding experience possible. Hannah has her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Arcadia University where she also was the captain of the women's varsity golf team.
Nathan Monger
Operations Manager
Nathan handles all things customer operations. From account setups to gateway configurations to general account support, Nathan's on it. Nathan holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Texas A&M University and in his free time enjoys a good game of highly competitive sand volleyball.
Jay Hershman
EVP Corporate Development
Jay brings three decades of FinTech-focused Channel-Partnerships experience to the company and is tasked with starting and growing the most mutually productive partnerships possible. Jay holds dual degrees from the University of Pittsburgh in Economics and Computer Science. When he's not forging the most mutually beneficial corporate partnerships, Jay likes spending his limited free time on the golf course.
Andy Walsh
Operations Support
Andy is a key support staff for all things Customer-related. He's monitoring newly boarded accounts to make sure they have the right information they need to get comfortable processing quickly, focused on various auditing tasks that we do portfolio wide and serving as a major support member to all of our customers.
Brian Tomes
Operations Support
Brian helps our Operations team and does a lot of the important work behind the scenes to make our Merchants go "wow". Brian graduated from St. Joseph's University with a degree in Business Administation and in his free time enjoys playing ice hockey.
Mahogany Rawles
Operations Support
With a broad background in operations at companies such as Blackbaud, Schreiber Translations, and United Rentals, Mahogany also helps in our operations and our PCI compliance areas of excellence, ensuring that each merchant is fully within scope of the latest PCI requirements. Mahogany attended Central Piedmont College in Charlotte, NC.
Peter Gural
Sales Operations
Peter helps make sure each and every business who expresses interest in Freedom Merchants is taken care of and communicated with quickly and efficiently. Peter recently graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and when he's not helping the onboarding process of our customers, he can usually be found playing his guitar at cool bars in the Philadelphia area.
Ilana Kalish
Operations Support
Ilana handles much of the customer on-boarding process where she makes sure that each new merchant is properly setup with full database access. Ilana helps in our PCI compliance center, ensuring that each merchant is fully within scope of the latest PCI requirements. Ilana graduated from the University of Maryland and is an avid music enthusiast and accomplished contributing writer for Atwood Music Magazine.
Stu Briefer
VP of Accounting
Stu leads Freedom Merchants' focused reconciliation division of customer accounts. Working collaboratively with our customers, he educates Merchants and pro-actively establishes best-practises for them to keep their transaction data sets perfectly accounted for. Stu brings decades of big firm CPA experience to the company as well as years of having managed his own set of accounting clients for his own firm. In his spare time, Stu still loves working in Excel.
Press
February 8, 2024 - Freedom Merchants enables dynamic credit-card surcharging with Shopify's Invoicing tools.
February 1, 2024 - Freedom Merchants mass deploys its newest tool - enabling multiple-bank account support within one QuickBooks Online file, enabling larger Merchants with multiple business-units to process payments hyper-efficiently without having to do any inter-unit transfers.
December 17, 2023 - In an industry first, Freedom Merchants enables the ability to selectively surcharge end-customers based on the US State of the payor as well as the merchant's domiciled State.
July 24, 2023 - Freedom Merchants brings on FinTech veteran Jay Hershman to further enhance existing Channel Partnerships and steer the overall Corporate Development effort.
April 22, 2023 - Freedom Merchants partners with Bluevine to offer 10-minute rapid approval of Business Checking accounts and Lines of Credit for new business owners everywhere.
Mar 18, 2023 - Freedom Merchants partners with MessageDesk to offer best-in-class Invoice-to-Text solutions with full QuickBooks Online real-time compatability.
Feb 7, 2023 - Freedom Merchants adds new VP of Accounting Stu Briefer to the team. Stu will be leading a new division focused on quality-control and account auditing.
January 25, 2023 - Freedom Merchants opens its doors for all Canadian Merchants impacted by PayPal's cancellation of AutoPay recurring billing that will take effect January 31, 2023.
December 6, 2022 - Freedom Merchants exhibits at QuickBooks Connect 2022 in Las Vegas.
December 1, 2022 - Freedom Merchants adds software and payments industry veteran Michael Rhoads to lead the new Customer Success department to further ensure the most satisfied customers in payments.
October 6, 2022 - Visa and Mastercard announced that in Canada merchants are now allowed to pass the Credit-card fees onto their customers. Freedom Merchants has an exclusive solution with QuickBooks Online to handle this big new development.
August 8, 2022 - Freedom Merchants adds industry veteran Hannah Kline to support the Accounting, Bookkeeping and Intuit Pro Advisor community and company marketing efforts
May 16, 2022 - Freedom Merchants launches full support of Pre-Customer Deposit Payments with QuickBooks Online and Unapplied Payment Matching
April 2, 2022 - Freedom Merchants announces support of Multiple Invoice payment capability for QuickBooks Online "Sub-Customers" in an industry first
February 17, 2022 - Freedom Merchants launches free Bronze/Silver/Gold style "Maintenance Plans" one-click sign-ups fully integrated with QuickBooks Online and auto-pay for both Credit-cards and Echeck/ACH
November 14, 2021 - Freedom Merchants now processing Echeck/ACH/Bank-Transfer transactions with rapid 1-day funding time for approved US-based merchants
July 9, 2021 - Colorado becomes the 48th US State to allow credit card surcharging with the standard notifications, a 2% rate cap and prohibition on Debit cards
June 12, 2021 - Colorado looks to become the 48th US State to allow credit card surcharging with the standard notifications, rate caps and prohibition on Debit cards
April 5, 2021 - Freedom Merchants maintains Echeck/ACH pricing at industry lows of 0.25% and $0.25 per transaction for all QuickBooks Merchants (QuickBooks Online, Desktop, Pro, Enterprise)
March 23, 2021 - Freedom Merchants announces special ACH pricing exclusively for newly applying QB Pro Advisors
February 2, 2021 - Freedom Merchants launches groundbreaking "Sales-Rep Only-Invoicing Tool" to avoid sharing entire QuickBooks Online file or any part of company financials with Sales Reps
December 11, 2020 - In an industry first, Freedom Merchants has enabled Multiple Invoice Payments for all QuickBooks Desktop/Pro/Enterprise Merchants (US Version) in a single transaction
October 22, 2020 - Freedom Merchants deploys its 1000th Merchant's Website-connected "Pay Button" integrated with QuickBooks Online
September 8, 2020 - Freedom Merchants releases "Threshold Surcharging" for Merchants who only want to charge a Surcharge above a threshold Invoice Amount
August 15, 2020 - Freedom Merchants completes End-to-End architecture for handling QuickBooks "Estimates" Payment-Handling, the first and only Merchant Provider to enable this with QuickBooks Online
May 29, 2020 - Freedom Merchants is providing a Free Credit-Card Terminal to any Merchant affected by the recent nationwide protests
March 30, 2020 - Freedom Merchants Activates "Hyper-Express Priority Setup" for Merchants Impacted by Covid-19 that need to pivot immediately to Online Sales and Billing
February 1, 2020 - Freedom Merchants keeps Echeck/ACH pricing at industry lows of 0.25% and $0.25 per transaction while many other major providers make significant rate increases to 1% or $3 per transaction
January 9, 2020 - Only four States remain that prohibit End-Customer Surcharging
January 6, 2020 - Freedom Merchants launches 30-Second Max Phone Hold-Time for Customers
December 17, 2019 - Oklahoma becomes the 45th US State to drop its ban on End-Customer Credit-card Surcharging with Proper Disclosures
November 30, 2019 - Freedom Merchants enables all QuickBooks Online Merchants to continue to work with Internet Explorer browser, helping many Merchants in the Government sector that may still rely on IE
September 18, 2019 - Freedom Merchants continues to educate and lead the technology in the newly opened area of End-Customer Surcharging
April 24, 2019 - Freedom Merchants announces more features to its Intuit QuickBooks Desktop 2019 integration
March 28, 2019 - Freedom Merchants launches Checkout Pages and Intuit QuickBooks-integrated Invoicing for multiple SERVPRO Franchises around the country
January 9, 2019 - New York State and California become the latest two big US States to allow Business Owners to Surcharge their End-Customers
December 3, 2018 - Freedom Merchants Sponsor Exhibiting at Intuit QB Connect Toronto
November 29, 2018 - Freedom Merchants spotlighted in Insightful Accountant's Apps Unwrapped News
November 13, 2018 - Freedom Merchants is first to launch "Multi-Invoice Payment" capability for the QuickBooks workflow, expanding its total-integration toolbox even further
October 9, 2018 - Freedom Merchants becomes #1 on the Intuit-INDIA App-Store For Fully-Integrated Multi-Currency Processing With QuickBooks Online - INDIA
September 27, 2018 - Freedom Merchants becomes #1 on the Intuit-Australia App-Store For Fully-Integrated Multi-Currency Processing With QuickBooks Online - Australia
September 15, 2018 - Freedom Merchants announces full integration with Zoho Books
September 4, 2018 - Freedom Merchants becomes #1 on the Intuit-Great Britain App-Store For Fully-Integrated Multi-Currency Processing With QuickBooks Online - Great Britain
August 16, 2018 - Freedom Merchants completes total integration with QB Pro Desktop CANADA
July 2, 2018 - Freedom Merchants becomes #1 on the Intuit-Canada App-Store For Fully-Integrated Multi-Currency Canadian Processing With QuickBooks Online
May 9, 2018 - Freedom Merchants Exhibiting at Scaling New Heights 2018, one the leading national QuickBooks Pro Advisor conference in Atlanta, Georgia from June 17 - June 20
Nov 10, 2017 - New York Independent Automobile Dealers Association (NYIADA) selects Freedom Merchants as its Premier Partner for Merchant-Services for its 6,000+ Dealerships Across New York State
October 4, 2017 - Manhattan BNI Selects Freedom Merchants as its Exclusive Provider of Merchant Services for all organization Payment Processing systems
May 31, 2017 - Freedom Merchants completes direct "Revenue-Categorization" from Checkout Page to QuickBooks Online saving Bookkeepers, Controllers and Business Owners Dozens of Hours Annually
November 3, 2016 - Freedom Merchants Completes Exclusive Direct-Integration with Premier CRM Marketing-Software Company HubSpot
September 5, 2016 - Freedom Merchants becomes the #1 Top-Rated "Payment Processing App" on the Intuit App-Store for QuickBooks Online Users
March 10, 2016 - Intuit Corporation Approves Freedom Merchants as an Integrated App for QuickBooks Online, Enabling Merchants With Powerful Unique Features
January 14, 2016 - FMC CEO Ben Prusky Delivers 2016-Kickoff Keynote Address to New York Staffing Association on Eliminating Collections in the Staffing Industry
January 3, 2016 - Freedom Merchants Adds Veteran Citibank Commercial-Banker To Leadership Team
December 5, 2015 - Freedom Merchants Completes Simple Universal-Integration with QuickBooks-DESKTOP
October 24, 2015 - Freedom Merchants Successfully Deploys ApplePay Restaurant Application
October 1, 2015 - Freedom Merchants Moves Corporate Headquarters to Park Avenue South
September 9, 2015- FMC Finishes First & Only Bi-Directional Integration with QuickBooks-ONLINE
June 18, 2015 - Freedom Merchants Completes Only Non-Stripe Integration with SquareSpace
May 8, 2015 - FMC Introduces Robust Dynamic-Descriptor Technology
April 24, 2015 - Freedom Merchants Completes Two-Way Integration with InfusionSoft
April 7, 2015 - Freedom Merchants Completes Integration with ConstantContact
March 16, 2015 - Freedom Merchants Completes Integration with MailChimp
March 3, 2015 - FMC Powers Payments for the New York Staffing Association
February 20, 2015 - Freedom Merchants Completes Integration with SalesForce.com
Benefits
We CREATE the tools that allow Non-Profits we care about to grow and businesses whose values are consistent with ours to expand. To reward the impact our employees are making on the world, we offer a highly competitive Benefits package which includes:
Health Care Support
Frequent Company Meals
401k Plan with Match
Flexible Work Schedules
Career Advancement
Ongoing Education/Training
History
For the past 18 years we have been serving the needs of brand new business owners and those running their companies or organizations for a long time! We started out with a focus on data. The idea went like this: let's put ourselves in the middle of a big data-flow and see if we can make it useful for our customers. That evolved into a deep solution-set for Multi-Location groups of any and all industry types. We evolved a strong set of tools for merchants looking to fuse e-commerce and retail in ways that were unmatched by any other companies. And today we are totally focused on an absolute commitment to the Intuit QuickBooks integration and everything around that.
Advisory Board
We have some of the most successful business owners and Entrepreneurs on our side, giving us guidance in every key competency that helps us to better serve our broad and diverse customer base.