By: George Frey
Princeton eCom of Plainsboro, a provider of electronic billing and payment services, said Dec. 14 that it had completed a $13 million private equity investment by two existing investors, Mellon Venture and New Century Equity Holdings.
The equity investment includes the conversion of debt and interest funded previously by the investors and brings the amount of private equity invested in Princeton eCom since 1998 to more than $110 million.
"We’ve said that this round of funding will be used for the normal operations of the company," said Tom Healey, the director of corporate communications. "There are tremendous expansions underway and that this will continue to grow the company."
With the financing news, the company also announced the resignation of Curtis Welling as the chief executive officer and the appointment of Craig Kirsch as the interim CEO. Mr. Kirsch, most recently the acting CEO and CFO of Invesmart, of Pittsburgh, will lead the company and oversee the search for the new CEO to replace Mr. Welling, the company said.
Invesmart is one of the country’s largest private investment firms with over $10 billion in assets. Mr. Kirsch, who also held board positions with Kinkos and General Nutrition Centers, will also sit on eCom’s board of directors.
"I was proud to lead Princeton eCom and to play a role in developing the strategy and business plan that will take the company to the next level of success," Mr. Welling said. "Having reached this milestone, the time has come to place the leadership of the company in new hands. I strongly believe that Princeton eCom will continue to grow and succeed and build on its industry leadership position."
The company says it was the first to present a bill on the Internet and is the leading application service provider in the electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) arena. The company provides e-finance solutions to its customers.
The company is one of the few application service providers with the expertise to directly extract data from consumer’s biller’s legacy account receivables systems and securely parse the data in house, transform it into an on-line consumer bill and present it to a consumer on the biller’s Web site or through a consumer’s service provider or a financial institution such as a bank or brokerage firm, the company said.
The company has also more recently established an Internet bill presentment and payment using a wireless application protocol (WAP). The company said it processes more than 3 million financial transactions per month.
Princeton eCom said in 2001 it enjoyed continued growth in its billing and payment business.
Mr. Healey said eCom, which is privately held by several public companies including Mellon Ventures, Terra Lycos and Bottom Line Technologies, plans to become profitable in the second half of 2002.
