Protx™ Becomes Sage Pay™

16th May 2009

Back in November 2006 Sage™, the well known accountancy and CRM software company; bought out the UK merchant services provider Protx for twenty million quid.

Protx was established in 2001 and provides online payment services for small and medium businesses (SMEs) in the UK, with a customer base of over 10,000 businesses. Protx online payment gateways are accredited by a range of banks including Lloyds TSB Cardnet, Bank of Scotland, Barclays Merchant Services, HSBC, Natwest Streamline, American Express, Diners Card, JCB, and Euroconex.

At the time of the acquisition Sage Group chief executive Paul Walker said: “The acquisition of Protx brings Sage the capability to integrate secure payment systems with our business management software. With Protx in the UK and Verus in the US, we continue our strategy to expand into new adjacent markets and broaden the range of services we can offer our SME customers.”

Protx has always been our online payment gateway of choice for those clients who are looking to sell online with a shopping cart based website or as a way of simply taking payments online in a secure manner through their website.

The company has some good value products that do exactly what they say they do and added to that, we’ve found their merchant and developer customer support to be responsive and helpful when needed.

When Sage came along and snapped them up I felt then as I do now, there’s no reason to change this view.

Protx Re-Branded to Sage Pay

A couple of years have now passed since the takeover and up until last month (April 2009) the company has continued to trade as Protx. The official launch of Sage Pay was on the April 21st with the launch of its new website www.sagepay.com This marked the demise of the Protx brand and its re branding to Sage Pay.

Will this re brand benefit the company? I think so. I always found that a lengthy explanation of who Protx were was needed when I recommended their products to our clients as the Protx brand had low recognition amongst SMEs. However with the introduction of the “Sage” name into the brand and the high recognition and confidence factors associated with this name amongst SMEs and the general public, I feel this will be reversed and will provide additional confidence to those shoppers who use Sage Pay merchant websites.

A short video from Sage about the change is below: