Polar Tool & Supply is a business-to-business commercial and industrial equipment supplier catered to contractors and construction businesses. As a company that has been in business for over 15 years, they know what it means to keep business moving. Their full-time staff repairs power and pneumatic tools, generators, and compressors, along with supplying top-of-the-line construction tools and equipment. If it needs repairing, they’ll get it done in short order and back to you or your job site.

The Opportunity: Level 3 Business-to-Business Merchant Services

Polar Tool Approached the Evolve Payment team through a strategic partnership with Platinum Bank, one of our community bank partners. They wanted to hold us to our phrase, “saving 20%-40%” and ensure what we promise clients is achievable. They wanted to improve their merchant services, but there was a catch – they didn’t want to switch platforms. It would be difficult for their business to lose all of their customer’s vaulted credit card information due to several factors, including language barriers and time spent collecting card information.

After Evolve Payments performed an analysis of three months worth of Polar’s statements, we noticed a unique opportunity that the previous processor didn’t catch (just another way we find hidden gems in your programs). Thanks to the Evolve Payment partnership with American Express, we were able to not only reduce their processing fees to have a net effective rate of below 2% but also introduce a new program that has helped businesses processing over 1 million annually go direct with AMEX.

A screenshot from their proposal. 2.15 is the previous processor, and 1.94 is our net effective rate

Solution: Amex Direct (OptBlue) // Tokenization of Information

Evolve Payment’s partnership with AMEX and our continuous education process allows us to jump on new opportunities and provide additional value to our customers. We learned that effective 4/22/2022, AMEX was introducing a new debit card program for unregulated and regulated consumer and business debit products. Here’s a closer look at those rates:

OptBlue Unregulated Consumer Debit Interchange

  • B2B / Wholesale Consumer Debit – 0.99% + $0.15

While introducing the OptBlue program, additionally, the Evolve Payments team seamlessly incorporated our technical expertise to meet Polar Tool’s other integration needs. We could easily transfer data by introducing the Polar team to a tool used for the tokenization of card information. This software extracts the current client data (name, location, card, etc) and transfers it from the previous account to the new account, saving the Polar team time and money on this otherwise arduous task. Evolve Payments was able to help guide Polar Tool through every step of the process, resulting in a successful and uninterrupted transfer of information.

The Result: A Trusted Partner & A Better Rate

Polar Tool realized significant financial savings from the transition to level 3 credit card processing. They continue to save over 10k annually on processing fees through our ongoing partnership, and even more on AMEX transactions thanks to the introduction of the OptBlue Program. The biggest success of this opportunity was the easy and seamless transfer of information into a new system, which meant the Polar Tool team had zero downtime between accepting payments.

The Evolve Payment team continues to have a great working relationship with Polar Tool’s accounting team and the organization. We’re continually providing customer support and managing their interchange rates to maximize their savings. If you’re interested in learning more about how we evolved Polar Tool’s merchant account, get in touch with our team today. We’ll take your account through the same process and save you up to 40% on your processing fees.