As a customer, one doesn’t often think about the back end of walking up to a register, purchasing a product, and swiping that ever-so-convenient piece of plastic known as the credit card.

But small businesses think about it. In fact, sometimes it hits them like a punch.

Let’s step beyond the swipe for a moment. As the use of credit and debit cards has gradually become more prevalent, so have the steps needed in order to process that “invisible money.” This adds another step that small business owners have to wrangle with when it comes to payment systems. In fact, the cost of credit card processing providers often hurts small businesses — enough that it’s not uncommon to see signs requesting cash over credit.

This is the problem that the founders of BNG Holdings, Brady Nash, Ryan Goodman and Tyler Buechler, set out to solve in the early days of building a company.

The origins of BNG

The three were students at North Dakota State University, and itching with the entrepreneurship bug. They knew they wanted to build their own company, so they dropped out of school and started one in network marketing. When that fell apart they wanted to tackle a new problem.

That’s when they realized that a problem they heard about time and time again was the issue of overpriced credit card processing systems. Particularly in the rural areas, such as Nash’s hometown of Lidgerwood, ND, they found that small shops were paying triple the amount in fees to provide credit card processing compared with Fargo stores.

“They found there were a lot of local, small businesses – tanning salons, restaurants, auto repair…whoever took a credit card through automated clearing house (ACH) – they found that [they] were being taken advantage of by local banks, credit unions, merchandise providers,” said Dave Scott, chief marketing officer. “They set out to do something different.”

By offering lower rates, they were able to grow to own the majority of the market share in Fargo-Moorhead, Scott said. Their customers include people like Trung Nguyen, a co-owner of Teaberry.

With BNG’s services, “I now pay less per transaction, gift cards now make me money instead of costing me, and charges on my statements make sense,” she said.

Since starting ten years ago, BNG Holdings has continued to grow. In the past two years, they went from around 15 employees to 40 employees including the founders. In addition, BNG Holdings was ranked as 1769 in Inc. Magazine’s top 5000 fastest growing companies last year, and #2 fastest growing in North Dakota.

Creating the BNG umbrella

They’ve expanded beyond the world of credit card processing as well. Now, they have formed the BNG Team which they call a “business solutions company.” Under that umbrella they do work with point of sales, marketing, web development as well as credit card services.

“We chose these four industries that each one does because of demand,” Scott said.

The BNG team also recently added a software called ConnectBooster to their list of offerings, a software that aids companies in eliminating outstanding bills by automating pay.

“Imagine a company sending out dozens if not hundreds of bills. And then often times companies just don’t pay that bill. They might wait 45-90 days. Then you don’t get paid and you can’t do things like, make payroll,” Scott said. “[ConnectBooster] is a software that automates it. You log in to a portal. You get paid automatically every month.”

Keeping hands in a variety of pots has contributed to BNG’s growth, Scott said. The company has even begun to attract people from outside of Fargo; Scott moved with his family from the Twin Cities to the Fargo tundra, and their most recent hire moved to Fargo from Florida.

Scott said some of the appeal was the culture of the company — something the BNG team emphasizes on their website (for instance, they have their own Clash of Clans team.)

In the next year, the BNG team is looking to hire around 15 more people with an emphasis on developers and marketing, he said. Despite doing business nationally as well as regionally, Scott said they plan to keep their roots in the prairie.

“We are committed to Fargo,” he said.

Feature photo provided by BNG Holdings: Brady Nash at the office.