Seaman vaults to new heights in payment Processing

CEO and founder of Swipesum, Michael Seaman.

Photo by Aaron Eisenhaurer

Michael Seaman had no intention of becoming an entrepreneur.

“That wasn’t in the plan,” he said in a recent interview for B Magazine. “I don’t really like the word ‘entrepreneur’ anyway.”

But like it or not, Seaman found entrepreneurial success in 2018 when he and his brother, Stephen, created Swipesum, a service that negotiates contracts between businesses and credit card processors. Initially located in Clayton, Missouri, Swipesum added a Cape Girardeau branch in 2020 when it was named a winner of Codefi’s 1ST50K competition that year. Seaman is the company’s CEO while his brother serves as chief operating officer.

Originally from Bardstown, Kentucky, Seaman attended college on an athletic scholarship, first at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and then at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, where he majored in communication studies and graduated in 2012.

“My thought process was to make as much money as possible after graduation, but I did the exact opposite for a long time,” the 35-year-old Seaman said. After making his mark as a collegiate track and field athlete, he aspired to represent the United States at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“I was really successful at collegiate pole vaulting and I got into the U.S. Olympic Training Center at Chula Vista, California, but I wasn’t making any money,” he lamented. “It was right before the Rio Olympics, my body was breaking down and I kind of saw I wasn’t going to make it, so I decided it was time to quit playing around and get a job.”

Seaman studied business at the University of Tennessee and while in college he also created and sold an internet-based craft business. He leveraged his business training and sales experience to secure a business development position at one of the nation’s largest credit card payment processing companies.

“I wanted to get into tech sales because of my personality. I think I’m a solid communicator and really outgoing,” he said. “I also thought I could make enough money to have a happy life.”

Photo by Aaron Eisenhaurer

Seaman was one of about 400 salespeople at the company and at one point during his two years there he was responsible for 20% of the company’s prospective deals.

“I found a nice little niche for myself and was making them a lot of money,” he said.

It was during those years that Seaman said he had an “ah-ha” moment when he realized he could improve on the company’s business model.

“Payment processing can be a shady business,” Seaman explained. “And in towns like Cape Girardeau where you [as a merchant] might not know someone who is an expert at payments or critical credit card access services, it’s easy to be overcharged for inadequate service, and what I found was that it was very easy for us to overcharge even if we didn’t have the best payment solution. We would often win deals with tons of margin in them.”

With that in mind, Seaman decided to create a “different” kind of payment processing company, one that gives merchants and business owners the ability to make what he calls “educated decisions” about their payment processing contracts.

“Swipesum,” Seaman explained, “is more customer centric. With Swipesum, we’ve partnered with all of the main payments companies and when people come to us, we act as consultants as opposed to pushing one single solution. You come to us, you tell us the software your business uses, your processes and how your customers want to pay, and we can show you the best options, the best solutions available on the market for you, and then we help you negotiate to get the best price.”

His experience at that first payment processing company, Seaman said, has allowed Swipesum to reduce contractual costs and give its customers a better profit margin.

“When I was working [at that company], I used to write the partnership agreements, so I knew all of the margins and loopholes in the agreements and so from the experience of negotiating on the other side of the table, when we went to set up Swipesum, we set it up so that we get paid based on volume and we’re able to get any business that works with us absolutely the very best deal.”

The company also has what Seaman describes as a “team” culture, with their workforce focused on accomplishing team goals.

“I kind of built it out of my athletic background, and so we try to operate as a team, as opposed to an organization with hierarchical levels,” he said. “We set everything up to be like an Olympic team here and all of our employees are overly-impressive overachievers in their own right.”

The company’s staff has grown to nearly 30 employees and is adding an average of about 75 new client businesses every month. The opening of Swipesum’s Cape Girardeau branch has allowed the firm to focus on business prospects throughout Southeast Missouri and the adjoining region. Seaman said the company has grown their revenue about 600% in the last year, and based on current deals, he projects Swipesum should have over $12 million in annual revenues within the next 12 months.

Swipesum’s presence in Cape Girardeau has not only allowed the company to expand in the Southeast Missouri region, but it has also allowed Seaman and his wife, Kelsey, to move their family closer to her hometown of Sikeston. The Seamans have three children — two young daughters and a 2-month-old son. “We keep adding babies,” Seaman laughed. “We’re going to have a very large family here.”

Not only does he forecast growth for his family, but for Swipesum as well, as the company’s anticipated growth has attracted potential investors and acquisitions.

“We’ve had interest from other large companies to buy some sort of chunk of the business. I’m ready if the right offer comes and I’d like that to happen in the near future. I think something will happen in the next 24 months. We’re positioning everything to do that. When that happens, it will only get better for the company and revenues can grow from $10 million to $100 million when you have the resources some of our [potential] buyers have.”

As for his personal future, Seaman said he won’t “run off to a beach” after he sells Swipesum.

“I don’t think anything workwise will change. What they started [at Codefi] is really coming to fruition and there are some cool tech companies here [in Cape]. I’m technically the ‘entrepreneur in residence’ here and I just want to keep working.”