Most small business owners shop for payment processing the way they shop for insurance: find the lowest quoted rate, sign, and move on. Jimmy Moore, co-founder and CEO of FLO Business Solutions, thinks that instinct is aimed at the wrong risk. A rate can be renegotiated. The contract, the hardware, and the software it is welded to often cannot.
Jimmy has spent more than two decades in payments, including leadership roles at Heartland Payment Systems and NCR, and over his career he and his teams have onboarded more than 20,000 businesses. FLO, which he co-founded in 2021, ranked No. 1,325 on the 2026 Inc. 5000.
His starting point is structural. Jimmy describes merchant processing as one of the least policed corners of financial services, with no securities-style regulator watching how rates and contract terms get sold. That leaves due diligence almost entirely on the merchant, and most merchants are too busy running a restaurant, a CPA firm, or a dental office to do it.
The traps usually start small. A business leases terminals it does not need, buys software that does not fit, or signs at a rate that quietly changes. “They end up signing up for one rate, and then when they see their monthly statements, it’s a different rate, and now they’re in this contract, or there are liquidated damages or large cancellation fees,” Jimmy says. “We see it every day.”
The deeper problem is proprietary technology. Many point-of-sale systems, CRMs, and scheduling tools come tied to a single in-house processor, so the merchant cannot bring its own bank or shop the payments side separately. Choosing the software quietly becomes choosing the processor, the payroll provider, and the price for years to come.
Square is the clearest example. As Jimmy puts it, a Square client ends up running payroll, payments, and scheduling through Square. He is not a critic, and FLO is an authorized Square dealer. He calls it a good product that is simply not the right fit for everyone. His point is that convenience and lock-in often arrive in the same box.
Consolidation makes that lock-in more expensive. “In our supply chain, almost every quarter, one of our key players is getting acquired,” Jimmy says, “and then over the course of six months or a year, you start seeing changes.” Pricing moves, support thins out, and the people a merchant trusted are no longer there.
That is why FLO is built as a broker and reseller rather than a single-product shop. Alongside its own FLO POS, it places clients on ADP, Paychex, Paylocity, Gusto, and other payroll platforms, matching the tool to what the business actually needs. The cost of that flexibility lands on FLO, whose team handles discovery, on-site installation, training, and a monitored first payroll instead of selling one system off a menu.
Fair pricing is the other half of the argument. Jimmy recalls a CPA group whose rate had crept to almost 10 points and a restaurant group at 6. A competitor could have pitched 5 and looked heroic, but with the true cost around 2 points, that still would have left tens of thousands of dollars of margin on the table. FLO priced them at roughly 3 to 3.5 points.
For owners, the practical test comes before the rate quote. Ask whether the software works with more than one processor, what it costs to leave, whether the equipment is owned or leased, and whether the pricing is locked. FLO offers a three-year price guarantee for that reason. Owners should also resist the reflex to use their bank’s processor by default, which Jimmy says is usually not in a merchant’s best interest.
Looking ahead to the next five years, his advice is to stay nimble and avoid getting too deep into any one tech stack. A slightly higher rate on a flexible stack can be fixed with a phone call. A great rate on a stack you cannot leave stays great only until the vendor gets acquired!