Big changes not expected with iPay Sale

While one of Elizabethtown’s most successful businesses recently was sold to a Missouri company, radical changes are not expected for iPay Technologies and its roughly 250 workers.

Co-founder Dana Bowers said there will be no job losses and the operation will remain at its Black Branch Road location.

The company that bought iPay, Jack Henry & Associates, announced Monday it had finalized the $300 million deal.

Bowers’ husband, Mike, said it was the second largest sale of a technology company ever in Kentucky.

“It’s great news for the employees,” Dana Bowers said, pointing out iPay now is part of a larger organization.

Jack Henry didn’t have the capacity to perform the function of iPay, now its wholly owned subsidiary. So it won’t consolidate it now that the sale is complete, Bowers said. The buyer has a rich history of acquiring companies and leaving them in place, she said.

Bowers also said she believes iPay will retain its name – but with a reference to Jack Henry, which was an iPay customer.

“They know how we do business,” she said.

In the span of about a decade, iPay grew into the nation’s largest independent electronic payment processor. It serves 40 percent of all banks and credit unions that offer online bill payments.

“You don’t get that large without a reputation for doing things well,” Bowers said.

iPay is well-known in the financial services industry, but is transparent to the end user. So there is not a lot of awareness from customers whose payments are processed.

Bowers credits the company’s success with filling a nearly exclusive niche; iPay is one of only four companies that provide the same services.

Plus, it took a lot of hard work and iPay’s employees are loyal and dedicated, she said.

The Bowerses started a company known as Call Me Bill in 1997. They sold it two years later and bought it back in 2001, naming it iPay.

Dana Bowers, a Hardin County native, said it was important to her and her husband that they sold the company to a business that would be committed to the local community.

The Bowerses, who were partial owners of iPay, sold the company after receiving significant unsolicited interest in it.