Lane Conner wants to shake up the electronic payment industry again, this time helping the developers who create software, apps, and web pages get a share of the money long term.

This month, he launched Fuzse, a Dallas-based electronic payment company that bills itself as the boutique version of Stripe, which is a software platform for online business payment processing. He already has several customers lined up, and plans to hire five to 10 business development specialists early next year.

“We have a real opportunity here to empower our customers to spend more of their time developing great software and applications, while we deliver the best single-source solution for payments infrastructure,” Conner said. “We can save our clients time and money while freeing them to increase the quality of their own products.”

Here’s how it works:

Merchants want to sell a product online but often lack the expertise to build a web page or an app. So, they hire a developer to build it for them. Once it’s up and running, the merchant needs an electronic payment system to process payment transactions. Typically, the developer moves on to the next job and doesn’t get a share of future sales.

Conner, a veteran in the electronic payment industry, wanted to do things differently.

With Fuzse, he gives independent software developers a percentage of every sale in perpetuity. He partnered with 1stPayGateway and Anovia Payments’ Trio platform to develop the Fuzse technology.

With Fuzse, there’s a variable fee for processing payments that Conner said is lower than the competition. A percentage of the fee Fuzse collects goes back to the developer.

“That saves the merchant money,” Conner said. “They now can advertise that they’re using a different company other than Stripe. That’s a big deal for guys who have been in business for a while.”

“We have a real opportunity here to empower our customers to spend more of their time developing great software and applications, while we deliver the best single-source solution for payments infrastructure,”
Lane Conner

This gives independent software developers a long-term revenue stream, which builds a long-term relationship, Conner said.

Fuzse also provides metrics to the merchant that recognizes customers, tracks demographics data, and provides daily sales reports. It also has customer service support that’s available 24 hours a day.

One of the hardest parts of founding his own company was coming up with the name, Conner said. He wanted a word that signifies two things blending together. That’s the origin of the Fuzse name.

Before this venture, Conner co-founded Blue Star Payments Solutions, a sister company to the Dallas Cowboys. In 2015, that company was acquired by Providence Equity Solutions and has been renamed Blue Star Sports.

He’s also a former executive at First American Payment Systems and Century Payments. 

Conner serves on the Dallas Mayor’s Star Council for community leaders under 40.

“Dallas is our home and we are blessed to have an abundance of talented, community-oriented people powering our industry,” Conner said.

But he sees huge potential for the company to expand its reach to other tech-centric areas such as Austin, Silicon Valley, and Boston.

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