Electronic Payment Exchange
Headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware and with offices in Phoenix, Arizona, payment processor Electronic Payment Exchange (EPX) emerged as a division of a local bank headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware. The company spun off in 1979 as Electronic Check Services (ECS), specializing in processing ACH (electronic check) payments for paging companies and other membership or monthly service providers.
During the 1990s, ECS began offering credit card processing services alongside the ACH solution. The company served as an Independent sales organization (ISO), selling third party front-end and back-end credit card processing services in partnership with a number of banks. ECS analyzed the inefficiencies associated with the credit card processing industry, particularly the number of independent organizations it took to process a single transaction. Determined to find a better practice, ECS used the budding Internet for data transmission purposes, becoming the first known entity to have used The New medium to process credit card payments. By the mid-1990s, ECS had developed its own Internet-based technology to provide front-end payment processing services to the industry.
As the number of non-face-to-face credit card transactions (mail-order, telephone-order, Internet retail) increased, so too did the level of associated risk, specifically, data theft. ECS developed a surety product designed to protect financial institutions from the inherent risks associated with processing credit cards in these “card-not-present” environments.
Having developed a strong leadership presence in the payments industry during the Internet boom at this time, ECS renamed itself to Electronic Payment Exchange (EPX) to describe better the company’s direction and scope.
In early 2002, EPX was purchased by InterCept, a financial services provider to the e-commerce industry. In 2004, EPX reemerged as an independent company under its previous leadership.
EPX is a Participating Organization of the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.