Chattanooga start-up Tensile Payments is making online shopping cheaper than ever for small businesses— more than 80 percent cheaper, said officials. Small businesses pay nearly 4 percent of their revenue to credit card companies.
“The smaller the shop, the higher the processing fees,” said Tensile co-founder Hugh Morton, a Chattanooga native and resident. “You start to wonder where the options are for these merchants.”
Tensile was created to give stores a way to avoid those fees altogether by using ACH, a network similar to but cheaper than the credit and debit network.
The idea for Tensile stemmed organically from Mr. Morton’s experience across fintech, consulting, and banking—but the concept came to a head when the pandemic hit. Mr. Morton, who was working in New York City at the time, wound up back in Chattanooga and saw COVID’s toll on local businesses, some of which he’d loved since childhood.
“On top of all the challenges small businesses were facing, it seemed more unfair than ever that payment processing companies were charging them a premium,” said Mr. Morton. “Amazon and Walmart already have plenty of advantages. Shouldn’t payments be an equal playing field, especially since a more secure and lower-cost solution is possible?”
In the summer of 2020, Mr. Morton left his job at an ecommerce fraud prevention company in Manhattan to pursue Tensile full-time with his co-founder Stephen Shelton, who still lives in the New York area.
Today, Tensile is available for merchants using Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. The Tensile experience is customizable, allowing shop owners to create incentives specific to their audience or even their mission, as is the case with one local merchant.
Marithyme Seafood Company (marithymeseafood.com), a Chattanooga business that sells wild-caught and flash-frozen seafood, works with Tensile to offer carbon offsets associated with order shipments. For the customer and company alike, this offering is a natural continuation of Marithyme’s commitment to sustainability.
For customers that would like to use Tensile at participating merchants, select Tensile at checkout and follow the steps to create an account and securely pay with a bank account. The whole process takes under a minute at sign-up and is even faster for repeat customers.
To partner with Tensile as a merchant or want to learn more, reach out to sales@tensilepayments.com.