On a beautiful Sunday a few years back, New Zealander Chris Heaslip was sitting in his church with his phone in his pocket and not much cash in his wallet.

It was the helplessness of not having enough cash to donate at the moment that made the realisation hit Heaslip- what if giving money to the church were as simple as buying a song on iTunes? What if having cash at hand was no longer a requirement, and cashless payments weren’t a heap of fear and complexity anymore?

Soon after, Chris Heaslip and Eliot Crowther founded Pushpay in 2011. They expect to achieve annualised monthly revenue of $100 million by late 2017.

Pushpay Is the Easy Way to Give

The Pastor of Experience Church, Dennis Cummins, was astonished by the 1000{ed162fdde9fdc472551df9f31f04601345edf7e4eff6ea93114402690d8fa616} increase in the donation numbers, so much so that he decided to rerun the figures because he didn’t believe the calculations the first time.

Cummins isn’t the first, and his Church isn’t the only one to benefit from a faster and easier payment facilitating application. Church’s Pushpay reviews are mostly flooded with appreciation. With its services available in about fifteen countries, Pushpay dominates a good part of the faith sector of the USA.

The Ten-Second Giving Experience

The eChurch app by Pushpay allows the registered churches to create their branded app and customise it per their infrastructure.

It promises a ten-second giving experience, allowing people (customers/charity donors) to pay the merchant/church of their choice any particular amount of funds with the minimum possible hassle.

In the US, thirty of the largest hundred churches from the top employ Pushpay. The company has processed as much as $1 billion in a year at a time.

When Pushpay Almost Didn’t Exist

Back in 2011, Pushpay contacted the large churches of New Zealand to run trials for its product. With a somewhat rocky start that marks the realisation of every novel idea, the firm managed to raise enough capital to expand its business to Australia, and then to the USA.

Pushpay was rolling.

Then came 2013. The company ran out of funds. Heaslip sat down in front of his staff and apologised. The firm had no money to provide salaries to its employees. He felt he had let his workforce down.

Heaslip recalls that fateful day as the single hardest of his entire existence.

The sincerity, however, was rewarded. The staff chose to stay. Soon after, New Zealand riches Peter and Christopher Huljich took an interest in Pushpay. Heaslip and Crowther were handed an investment of $2 million.

Fast forward two years and Pushpay was taking the faith industry by a storm, reaching Canada and other countries.

Founded out of Frustration, Pushpay Had Its Moments

The company was ranked at the top in the 100 Hot Emerging Companies List in 2015. Crowther and Heaslip received the EY Young Entrepreneur of The Year award the same year.

Chris Heaslip, during one of his public appearances, called Pushpay the 15th among the set of ideas that he was working on at the time. He recalled the insane amount of determination, willingness, and hard work it took not to give up and keep learning and adapting.

At the time, Pushpay has more than 5200 merchants, most of which belong to the faith sector. It provides its services to five out of the top ten churches in the US. Pushpay Redmond and Pushpay Auckland headquarters watch over the handling in the USA and New Zealand respectively.

Pushpay careers saw an increase in its staff headcount by 33 per cent. It is working to become a part of additional digital payments to various other organisations in other zones.

Despite creating a service so thoughtful and seemingly flawless, Heaslip considers his workforce as their greatest asset, stressing on the paramount significance of having the right kind of people at the right point in the journey of any firm.

 

Keywords: eChurch app by Pushpay, USA Pushpay, Pushpay Heaslip and Crowther, Pushpay careers, Church’s Pushpay reviews, Pushpay Redmond, Pushpay Auckland

PushPay is a New Zealand based payment solution that proves to be more than just that. In 2011, PushPay was just an idea conceived by a man who, like many of us, had trouble making a payment. That idea has transitioned into a rapidly growing commerce exchange platform in just six years. Apart from empowering businesses, Pushpay also functions as a donation platform for various non-governmental organisations and churches across New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.

What Sets them Apart from the Other Payment Solutions?

While PushPay is a commerce flow facilitation platform, it also operates as a voice for churches and organisations who need donations for a cause. In this busy world, while most of us have the resource to donate money, we do not have the time. The co-founders of Pushpay, Chris Heaslip and Eliot Crowther wanted to eliminate just that. They have simplified the payment time to just ten seconds, which has made making payments an easy task.

Customer Friendly Monetisation

Pushpay enables a firm to contact their customer and thus establishes a good relationship between the two. This unique feature sets it apart from its competitors in the global market. Small or big, business is a business, in the view of this multi-national firm. The signing up and payment process is simplified to avoid any inconvenience that the customer may face while making a payment.  

The Idea of Giving, Anytime, Anywhere

This innovative initiative taken by this firm has given it a high reputation among Churches and Organisations alike who have the need to be heard and helped. Over 6,000 churches have partnered with PushPay. A customer need only spend less than ten seconds or five in some instances, to donate any sum he wishes to support the cause of a Church of their choosing. The Virtual Terminal/Envelope Giving allows the customers to make credit card, debit card, and ACH payments.

Leader in the Global Markets

The products offered by PushPay are based on the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. SaaS expert Jason Lemkin describes the exponential development of the firm as a “hyper-growth” based on his evaluations, having grown from an Annualized Committed Monthly Revenue (AMCR) of $1m NZD to $10m NZD in just a year and four months since its inception in 2011. Currently, the AMCR of the firm is an impressive amount of $28.01m NZD. Added to this exuberant figure, this company had set a record of servicing $500m NZD in the November of 2015 which was a huge $300m NZD more than its money flow in March of that same year.              

Generosity Drove Success

In 2015, the efforts invested by the co-founders bought them the ‘EY Young Entrepreneur of the year award’. The US faith-based market saw the emergence of two young men who set up a global platform for them to be benefitted. This initiative to improve faith and aid their cause has earned the firm applause even from the neighbouring faith-circle in Canada. The Firm’s social responsibility has made an impact on more the 150 million church-goers and led to its generosity-driven success.

The Question of Security?

PushPay has a highly secure cloud trade forum. Keeping in mind the importance of Privacy, the security developers of PushPay have made the donating and exchanging process, an easy one. This ensures that there is no room for data hacking or fraudulent activities.

Financial Partners

The steady growth of PushPay attracted globally reputed financial institutions such as Pie Funds, ASB, Visa, Mastercard, Watercare, and AMP to partner with them. The Auckland-based cloud commerce exchange platform has become a SaaS force to be reckoned with. Apart from its prominent service countries such as New Zealand, Australia, and the US, PushPay has established its network across Europe, Canada, and Mexico. The top-notch quality of service provided by the Exchange platform is the key to their success. 

Keywords

Commerce Exchange platform, Firm, cloud trade forum, commerce flow, payment solutions, cause, payment and donate.

For companies such as Pushpay Holdings Limited which have small market capitalisation, financial strength is the deciding factor for their existence in the long run.

A low debt load may lead the investors to believe that the company has a strong financial base. However, financial strength is also governed by operating cash flows and earnings stacked up against debt.

The lack of geographic diversification is one of the major reasons for which such companies are highly affected by a downturn in an industry in the region, or in the country’s economy. So, investors often go for small-cap funds.

Well-versed investors, on the other hand, allocate to individual small-caps a small part of their portfolio capital, with the primary aim of improving its risk-return profile. But that does not reduce the risks that these companies face individually.

The Company

Pushpay Holdings Limited develops mobile payment solutions with primary operations in the United States. The company was incorporated in 2011 and has its headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand. The company creates a platform for electronic payments and mobile commerce and offers tools to merchants for engaging with consumers.

The solutions provided by the company comprise Event Registration, an instinctive solution that offers registration and sign ups, a collection of payments, and other process solutions to churches. Another product is 3D Touch. It is a built-in support technology to help make repeat payments by using its platform.

The company also allows app vendors to include a five-second giving experience within their mobile apps with a few configuration solutions by using Pushpay Fastpay. The Envelope Giving solution or Virtual Terminal allows the church administration to process the envelope based debit card, credit card, and ACH payments by using Pushpay.

Does Pushpay Holdings Have Enough Cash To Weather A Storm?

Even though Pushpay Holdings has low levels of debt, it requires a sound liquidity position to carry on operations in the event of a downturn. While evaluating financial strength, one needs to compare a company’s total debt to its current assets (both liquid and cash assets). Pushpay Holdings total debt ($1M) is easily covered by the current assets ($7M), giving the company enough control over its balance sheet to make it through a downturn.

Are the Earnings of Pushpay Holdings Sufficient To Service Its Debts?

A different way to look at the financial health is to compare Pushpay Holdings’ earnings with the interest obligations. Scrutinising the income statement will reveal both these numbers. These numbers are important in determining whether Pushpay Holdings can service its debt without any hassle during adverse conditions.

A ratio of interest payments versus earnings above 5x is an indicator of a strong financial position. In the case of Pushpay Holdings, the earnings cover the interest on debt pretty well (327.6x coverage).

Conclusion

Pushpay Holdings does well on the interest costs to earnings ratio. However, it fails to impress in the case of comparison between the operating cash flows and overall debt. It appears that Pushpay Holdings needs to increase its operational efficiency to be classified as a financially healthy company. 

LSI Keywords – Pushpay Holdings, financial strength, cash flows, current assets.