Hey, thanks for tuning in to another Partner Interview at EcomBalance. At EcomBalance, we’re all about creating win-win partnerships where we are able to grow with other companies in the ecommerce space.
In this exclusive interview, we have a conversation with Christopher Reinhardt from TCG Payments.
With a start in E-commerce over half a decade ago, Christopher specialized in operations and marketing for DTC brands. This led to the creation of an E-commerce incubator where he had built DTC brands from the ground up to a point of merger & acquisition.
From there, he was promoted to a managing partner at a leading Paid Search Agency servicing any & all E-commerce, SaaS, and physical service-based companies. This brings him to today, where he co-founded a payment solutions company to aid any businesses in an area where he knows proper client care is lacking.
Chris’s goal is to bring any company the proper quality payment solutions that they deserve!
Connor: Hey Chris, thanks for taking the time to chat with us today. As a company, one of our goals is to highlight our partners so that our clients can benefit where it makes most sense. To get started, can you give us a high-level introduction to TCG Payments and a little bit about how the company got started? 
Chris: TCG Payments is a B2B and B2C payment technology consulting company. We got started because throughout our individual ecommerce journeys we identified the need for more transparency and customer support in the payment processing industry.
It was hard to find, so we decided to take the issue head on and do it ourselves. We were able to help out our immediate network with their payment processing questions and realized that this really is a service that people need across many different industries and especially in ecommerce.
At that point, we went on a mission to set up relationships with the most reputable and trusted payment companies in the world in order to start offering payment solutions to business owners. Connor: Thanks for sharing that! Can you dive a bit more into the payment solutions services that you offer? Our audience is always looking for reputable companies that they can lean on for specific parts of their eCommerce businesses. Chris: We are experts in integrations. Our team knows how to integrate payments into pretty much all of the major platforms.
Our goal is to make the payment processing switch as seamless as possible by handling all of the technical aspects of the project so that our clients can focus on what they are good at, which is running their business. Connor: Jumping off of that…when you’re thinking about your ideal customer, who is that? Where are they selling online? Where are they located in the world? How much sales do they typically have in a year? If there’s any other qualities, please include them as well. We’re all about making introductions where it benefits both parties. Chris: In short, our ideal customer is any business looking to improve their payment solution. Specifically for online businesses, we primarily work with direct-to-consumer brands and service based businesses.
We generally work with all legal industries. We are able to work with all businesses that are based in the United States and typically our clients process between 500K and 5M annually.
Our ideal clients are business owners that find themselves in unique situations that require more personalized attention to their processing solution. Connor: For our audience to truly understand what makes you stand out from other companies in the payment solutions space, can you share a story of how TCG Payments truly helped one of its customers?Chris: TCG is the only company in the merchant services space truly serving our clients interests first. We understand what it’s like working with all of the banking institutions — they are against you.
Most times, processing companies are against you too because you need them. TCG focuses on providing our clients with a voice on their side when finding a payment solution. Connor: As you and your company think about the next year ahead, what does it look like? Are there any specific initiatives that you’re working on as a team to better your product or service for your customers?Chris: Our next year ahead is exciting, we are going through a massive growth phase.
Our main initiative is maximizing our time to reach as many businesses as possible. It’s really about education. A lot of business owners, especially in ecommerce, feel like Stripe or PayPal are the only options for processing payments.
When we are able to create a conversation, people recognize that they have so many options when it comes to how they want to process ACH and credit card payments online. Connor: How about this…everyone loves a company’s growth story. We all naturally go through ups and downs as a company. What was one of the biggest challenges that the company faced in its growing stages? Chris: One of the biggest challenges in the beginning was the ability to take what seems like a complex, confusing industry and break it down into easy to understand conversations. It’s always tough to take something that you deal with, understand, and talk about everyday and then attempt to easily educate someone on that specific topic.
Sometimes there are a lot of (what seem like) moving pieces involved in certain situations that, in order to give a business owner the best possible solution, need to happen. Those solutions can require multiple integrations involving a few different companies and software and it can start to kind of make your head spin.
I think we’ve done a great job of adapting to that challenge by being able to take that complexity and simplifying it. Our goal is to inform and educate every business owner we talk with so that they can make the best decisions for their business. Connor: Thanks! Let’s talk some eCommerce! Where do you see the industry heading in the next 1-2 years? Any big changes that you’re predicting for the industry? How can eCommerce companies prepare for it?Chris: It’s all about streamlining! This is truly an exciting time in the world of internet based businesses. Innovated technologies are being released almost weekly to improve workforce and target hyper focused pain points that e-commerce businesses face.
This creates an opportunity for ourselves as a business to always improve the payment architecture that we establish for our clients. Once that foundational architecture is placed our clients are able to pivot and adjust as their business grows and needs change.Connor: Changing gears a little bit…When it comes to bookkeeping and accounting, what do you think the biggest pain points for eCommerce business owners are? Feel free to speak from personal experience as well. Chris: When it comes to bookkeeping and accounting for eCommerce businesses some of the major pain points are keeping track of all of your ad spend on the various marketing platforms that you may be using.
In addition, trying to keep track of profit margins when you are shipping from one or many suppliers to multiple customers can get a little tricky. If you are able to consolidate your bookkeeping into a streamlined process, and are able to manage your inbound and outbound payments, bookkeeping and accounting becomes much less of a headache.
We have integrations with QuickBooks and Xero as well as other bookkeeping software. Connor: Okay, here’s an open mic opportunity. If there’s one thing that you’d want the EcomBalance community to hear from you, what would it be?Chris: We are always open for a conversation with any business owner. Even someone just looking for advice on issues they are having with payments in their business.
Like I said, our main goal is really to educate as many business owners as possible so that they can feel better about the decisions they are making. Business owners don’t pay us a dime, most of the time we just put money back into their pockets by lowering the processing fees they are paying through Shopify Payments, Stripe, Paypal, etc. Connor: As we close this out, I just have one more question. Where is the best place to find and follow you and the company online? Also, if you have one, is there any special offer that you’ll be offering to the community today? Chris: The best place to find us is at tcgpayments.com, if you’re interested in having a conversation please book a time on our Calendly… As far as a special offer goes, we are offering a free in depth payment audit for anyone involved in the EcomBalance community!
