Earnings Call Transcript - RPAY Q3 2021

Operator, Operator

Greetings, and welcome to today's earnings conference call being hosted by REPAY. With us today are John Morris, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer; and Tim Murphy, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements about our beliefs and estimates regarding future events and results. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in the SEC filing related to today’s results and in our most recent Form 10-K filed with the SEC. Actual results might differ materially from any forward-looking statements that we may make today. The forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and we do not assume any obligation or intent to update them, except as required by law. In an effort to provide additional information to investors, today’s discussion will also include references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. An explanation of those non-GAAP financial measures, as well as a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the newest GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release and earnings supplement, each of which are available on the company’s IR site. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Morris. Please go ahead, sir.

John Morris, CEO

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to review our third quarter, which will be one of our best since becoming a public company over two years ago. During the quarter, we reported card payment volume growth of 48%, total revenue growth of 62%, and gross profit growth of 69%, which included 15% organic growth. We also reported adjusted EBITDA growth of 73% in the third quarter. Our highly integrated payment technology has been purpose-built to address the increasingly connected economy. The secular trends towards frictionless digital payments were a contributing factor to our growth in the quarter and continue to be a tailwind that will drive our business for years to come. In fact, approximately 95% of our volume is now comprised of a combination of card-not-present, and recurring transactions. These trends were aided by an incredible effort from our direct sales team, as well as ourselves through our ISV integrations, which continue to be a strong growth channel for us. We currently have 214 software integrations, which represents an increase of 127% year-over-year. We have built a really strong sales pipeline as demand grows for our digital payment solutions. The powerful trends driving our business and numerous valuable sales channels are also aided by the fact that the $5.3 trillion market we currently address has been and continues to be underserved from a payments perspective. These verticals still rely heavily on paper forms of payment. Our technology helps convert these paper payments to digital for both money-in and money-out transactions, meaning both acceptance and outbound supplier payments. We are growing adoption and taking share in these verticals, due to our enhanced payment technology. The B2B space remains wide open and represents the largest opportunity to increase penetration with a focus on virtual cards. We're making significant progress in B2B, due to the five acquisitions we've completed and integrated to create a powerful best-in-class offering in the market. This is supported by superior distribution through our 80-plus B2B software integrations, representing approximately 15 vertical end markets. We now have over 3,500 clients in our B2B business. And on the AP side, we've grown our supplier network to over 105,000, an increase of approximately 14% from last quarter. Crossing 100,000 suppliers is a major milestone for our AP business. We have a full supplier-enablement team that is working to grow that number every day, which will allow us to increase our virtual card adoption within our customer base. We're also increasing virtual card penetration through our TotalPay solution, which came through our acquisitions of cPayPlus and CPS last year. This solution allows us to automate 100% of our customers' outbound payments, no matter the payment modality. As a reminder, our AP business is focused on medium to enterprise-size customers and is growing approximately 30% annually. These B2B verticals have a long runway for growth due to low card penetration rates, which we estimate to be in the low to mid-teens. In addition to increasing virtual card adoption within our customer base, we also are seeing early success in cross-selling our combined AP and AR capabilities. We've been close partners with Sage and Acumatica within B2B merchant acquiring for some time. We now have the ability to do accounts payable within each of those integrations, which we think is pretty unique. We currently have several signed with an active and growing pipeline of clients for both sides of the transaction, meaning AR and AP, and expect that number to increase dramatically next year. In addition to cross-selling within our B2B customer base, we are seeing increasing interest from our lenders wanting to use our AP capabilities. They really value the idea of a one-stop shop for payments in general. In September, we announced our strategic partnership with Veem, an AR and AP automation provider serving small and medium-sized businesses. This commercial partnership agreement allows us to further expand our B2B offering by giving us the ability to deliver cross-border payment options. This provides us another opportunity to expand our payment options and is especially attractive partnership when it comes to our TotalPay offering that I mentioned a few moments ago. We're in the process of testing this technology with international vendors and expect to go to market with this offering in the first quarter of next year. The partnerships we signed earlier this year are starting to really bear fruit. In the spring, we announced our inclusion in the CDK Global Partner Program. We are now processing AP within several auto dealers as part of this program and also building a very healthy pipeline through that connection. As a reminder, CDK Global is the largest global provider of automotive dealership solutions with 15,000 retail locations in North America. Another relationship we discussed was with Billtrust BPN network. We have successfully added BPN as a new payment modality within our TotalPay solution and now have live payments through that channel. As you can see, we continue to expand our TotalPay solution, as we add additional payment modalities, as well as expand our access to various networks such as BPN and grow our supplier network. We're seeing tremendous success and growth in our B2B business, but equally as important, our clients are seeing real value in the services we provide. For instance, when we signed up a large eight-hospital 200-plus bed health system for our AP TotalPay solution, we were able to get the program up and running in less than two weeks. Their vendor participation increased over 16 times and for a company that is currently processing about $9 million in vendor payments each month, they are generating approximately $1 million in additional earnings annually from the cash rebates and reduced check printing costs. That's real savings and tangible proof that REPAY is helping make a material impact on their businesses overall. Moving on to the loan repayment side of our business, which is comprised of consumer-driven payments across auto loans, personal loans, mortgage, and credit units. One of the fastest-growing and exciting areas of this business continues to be the auto loan repayments due to the recent tailwinds such as elevated used car prices, increased demand, and digital engagement. These long-duration loans have greater repayment stats and our sales activity has picked up recently as dealers and lenders map out their customer-engagement strategies which will include payments. Our high-quality BP connected payment technology has become part of this engagement strategy. We continue to see a gradual rebound in personal loan volume as stimulus impacts wear off and consumers take on new loans for funding increasing consumption activities, particularly as we enter the holiday season. Our lending clients are continuing to find ways to engage more digitally with our customers, which fits very well with our payment technology. On that topic, we recently announced an expanded integration with GOLDPoint Systems, a loan management software company, to help lenders electronically send funds directly to borrowers' bank accounts in real-time driving digital transformation and providing consumers with instant access to funds. GOLDPoint users will be able to access instant funding in tandem with card and ACH processing for payment acceptance across all channels. Our instant funding business is still going strong and we are seeing increased adoption. Recently, we announced our extended integration with Inovatec, which will streamline the funding process for lenders on the Inovatec system in the U.S. and Canada. The integration will enable lenders to instantly fund loans from the same interface they use today without having to switch systems or platforms. In addition, beginning next year, we will enable Inovatec lenders to offer remote cash acceptance, which will further increase the convenient options for borrowers to make payments. We expect this partnership to help accelerate growth in Canada. We've also recently signed an exciting new partnership with Finicity, a Mastercard company, to offer consumer permission lending data insights to merchants so they can make predictive lending decisions and verifications. On the mortgage side, MSR values and trading continue to pick up momentum, which increases the value and need for our STX network. Our focus on first-time payments for originators through our Ellie Mae partnership fills a gap in the marketplace and we see good momentum and receptivity for mortgage customers. We believe that our emphasis on creating efficiencies for our mortgage servicers continues to create organic growth opportunities both within our existing customer base and with new customers. Our TriSource processing business, which we've renamed REPAY Clearing and Settlement, or RCS continues to perform nicely. It's strategically valuable to own our back-end processing platform, which gives us unique capabilities to control the customer experience in areas such as billing and reporting. We see very strong sales momentum with processing customer prospects and expect to experience additional new wins going into 2022. We saw a lot of progress on both our existing B2B and consumer payments businesses. We also continue to look to further expand our end markets through M&A as well as organically. M&A continues to be an important growth driver for our business. Our pipeline remains very active across key areas such as B2B and health care. We are also seeing some interesting opportunities in existing loan repayment verticals. We're very pleased with our ability to integrate a majority of the seven acquisitions we've made since going public a little over two years ago. Our integration of BillingTree is going well. Towards the end of this year into early 2022, we're converting the back-end processing to our platform in which case we'll start to realize those processing cost synergies. We've already made solid progress in realizing the OpEx cost savings and we're very much on track to hit the total $5 million synergies target that we estimated previously by the end of next year. In addition to adding many talented team members in ISV integrations, this acquisition has allowed us to further expand our position into health care, credit unions, and accounts receivable management. We now have over 190 credit union customers combined with BillingTree, representing approximately 2.2 million collective members. This continues to be an exciting growth area for our business. To wrap up, I'm incredibly pleased with our performance this quarter and even more excited about the future for our company. Our focus on both B2B and consumer payments verticals has positioned us well in the market. We continue to feel great about the long runway ahead for organic and inorganic growth and the strong recent additions to our team will help us address these large and growing verticals. With that, I'll turn it over to Tim to discuss the financials in greater detail.

Tim Murphy, CFO

Thank you, John. Now, let's move on to our Q3 financial results before I review our financial guidance for 2021. As John mentioned, in the third quarter, REPAY delivered strong results across all of our key metrics. Card payment volume was $5.6 billion, an increase of 48% over the prior year third quarter. Total revenue was $61.1 million, an increase of 62% over the prior year third quarter. This represents a take rate of approximately 110 basis points, mainly reflecting the benefits of increased virtual card adoption and the strong financial profile of BillingTree. cPayPlus, CPS, BillingTree, and Kontrol contributed approximately $17.8 million of incremental revenue during the quarter. Moving on to expenses in the quarter. Other cost of services were $15.3 million compared to $10.5 million in the third quarter of 2020. The incremental other cost of services from cPayPlus, CPS, BillingTree, and Kontrol were $3.2 million for Q3. Gross profit was $45.8 million, an increase of 69% over the prior year third quarter. As John mentioned, on an organic basis, we saw gross profit growth of 15% compared to the third quarter of 2020 as shown on slide five of the Q3 supplement posted to our IR site. We remain very encouraged by accelerating organic growth with an exit rate in September of 16% and continued positive momentum into early Q4. This organic growth was primarily driven by strength across our loan repayment verticals as well as continued solid performance in our TriSource back-end processing business. We're also seeing a recent pickup in growth of Ventanex due to increased mortgage activity and what appears to be the start of a rebound in elective health procedures. SG&A was $33.7 million compared to $28.6 million in the third quarter of 2020. Third quarter adjusted net income was $19 million or $0.21 per share. Lastly, third quarter adjusted EBITDA was $27 million, an increase of 73% over the prior year third quarter. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of total revenue was 44% compared to 41% in the prior year third quarter. This increase in margin is mainly a result of stronger than expected margins of BillingTree, primarily due to solid execution on OpEx synergy realization. We do still anticipate increased investment in sales, technology, and product to continue putting in place the proper infrastructure for accelerated organic growth into 2022. Combined net leverage is approximately 2.9 times, a very comfortable level which will allow us to continue to fund organic and inorganic opportunities. As of September 30th, we had $116 million of cash on the balance sheet and access to $125 million of undrawn revolving capacity for a total liquidity amount of $241 million. During the quarter, we funded approximately $13 million of nonrecurring investments such as the cPayPlus earnout and V minority investments. As of September 30th, we had approximately 99 million shares outstanding on a fully diluted basis. Finally, moving on to our outlook for 2021. We are pleased with our results year-to-date, particularly the organic growth and expect the momentum to continue throughout the remainder of this year and into 2022 as the economy recovers. Therefore, we are adjusting certain expectations for the year. We expect volume to be between $20.3 million and $20.8 million; total revenue to be between $216 million and $222 million; gross profit to between $161 million and $166 million; and adjusted EBITDA to be between $93 million and $96 million. While we don't intend to provide formal 2022 guidance into our Q4 earnings call, given the positive trends we've seen more recently, we would like to provide additional detail on our current outlook for next year. We expect total top line growth to be approximately 30% and underlying this we expect organic growth to be high-teens to 20% for the full year 2022. We expect total adjusted EBITDA growth to comfortably exceed 30% in 2022. Again, we feel very good about our performance thus far in 2021 and look forward to finishing the year strong with accelerated growth into 2022. I'll now turn the call back over to the operator to take your questions.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. The first question comes from Peter Heckmann from D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

Hi, everyone. This is John on for Pete. One more time, what was the organic growth in the quarter? It looks like it was 12% plus about $19 million of revenue from the three acquisitions over the last year?

Tim Murphy, CFO

The organic growth rate for the quarter was 15%.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

Okay. Awesome. And then... Yeah. Yeah. What was the growth in the auto lending business in the quarter as well? I know that you guys last quarter relayed that the auto lending area generated around 25% growth?

Tim Murphy, CFO

Yes. That's consistent this quarter as well.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

Got it. Got it. Now if I can squeeze in one last one. And the growth in the personal lending business?

Tim Murphy, CFO

The growth in the personal lending business is probably in the low-teens. It's moving back up towards mid-teens. But as we said, the recovery has been gradual.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

Got it. Thank you so much.

Operator, Operator

Next question comes from Ramsey El-Assal from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Ramsey El-Assal, Analyst

Hi, great quarter. I wanted to ask about TriSource and the impact of the Delta variant on the TriSource business so far, as well as the pace of macro recovery you are anticipating for TriSource. I'm trying to understand if a significant recovery is expected in that business or if a more favorable environment than anticipated could provide additional upside.

John Morris, CEO

Yes, this is John. Hi, Ramsey. We expect to see a clear recovery in the TriSource business. There may be some positive seasonality in the fourth quarter. We are pleased with the organic growth rate in that business, which was the first acquisition we made after going public. We believe it has been beneficial for our technology platform and our ability to process settlement funds across various card networks. We are excited about our competitive advantage and the progress we're making as our own customer. This remains a strong advantage as we enhance our features and functionalities to improve the overall experience. Market-wise, we're seeing positive results, and we expect it to stabilize and rebound.

Ramsey El-Assal, Analyst

Great. I wanted to ask about your margins for next year. Can you discuss any potential investment plans or challenges you're anticipating for next year? Margins were strong this quarter, and I'm trying to understand the factors that will impact margins next year.

Tim Murphy, CFO

Yeah. So we feel very good about this quarter as well. You're seeing the impact of BillingTree on the P&L. It's a really positive financial profile. So you can see that flow through to gross and adjusted EBITDA margins. So while we would expect that to continue to benefit the business, we do want investor growth, we do want to invest in accelerated growth in areas like sales, product, and technology, which I think maybe would bring the adjusted EBITDA margins probably back to around 43%. They are higher this quarter. And then from a gross margin standpoint, the BillingTree processing cost savings will positively benefit gross margins. And so we see those continuing to pick up.

Ramsey El-Assal, Analyst

Terrific. Thank you so much.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Sanjay Sakhrani from KBW. Please go ahead.

Sanjay Sakhrani, Analyst

Thanks. Good evening. I guess, I was wondering if you could parse apart that 15% organic growth between loan repayment and B2B, just to get a contextual understanding of how each of those businesses are doing? And then as we look into next year, how do you see that mix evolving?

Tim Murphy, CFO

Yeah. I mean, most of the organic growth is driven by loan repayments. We still haven't gotten to the point where we've lapped the acquisitions in B2B to drive that growth. So most of it’s loan repayments and then to some extent TriSource. And then we are seeing a lot of positive momentum in Ventanex. So we'll see the B2B businesses we acquired last year flow into the organic calculation in Q4 and then into next year, and because they're growing faster than the overall average that's one reason why we still have confidence in the high-teens to 20%. And so that's how we think about it. And again the fast-growing B2B business has set us up for longer organic growth.

Sanjay Sakhrani, Analyst

I appreciate that. And then as we think about the M&A pipeline, I know John you, sort of, mentioned some of the verticals that you're looking, but maybe you could just talk about size and scope?

John Morris, CEO

Hi Sanjay. We've made two acquisitions already this year, one particularly large for us. The BillingTree acquisition has gone really well so far. We've been able to realize our operating synergies and continue to execute our plan effectively. As we move into 2022, we are finalizing our processing synergies and expecting results in line with our previous expectations. Overall, we wanted to digest these acquisitions and have managed to do so effectively, which was intentional. This summer has been busy as we observe active deal flow. Jake and our team are exploring various opportunities, being selective about the ones we pursue. We look for specific attributes that drive fast-growing businesses in similar verticals, and we've identified some promising opportunities. We are still being selective, but we also see several attractive options in the marketplace that could complement our existing verticals, and we would consider pursuing them when the timing and market conditions are right.

Sanjay Sakhrani, Analyst

Great. I guess one last question on loan repayment. Obviously, B2B is going to be a faster-growing space. But as we think about, the significant TAM and addressable market there still. I'm just curious, how you're seeing that unfold, because I remember like OEM was a bright spot. That was an opportunity. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about sort of the opportunities you're seeing there? Thanks.

John Morris, CEO

Yeah. So, yeah, we still feel really good about that part of our business. It's just growing nicely despite some of the COVID impacts. Auto in particular is where we're seeing a lot of success. We still are targeting certain OEMs. We think that they're still taking a lot of payments via check and ACH. And so there's an opportunity to move them to digital. There's also a big move to online car sales that typically are also doing their own financing. And so we're targeting some of those online car dealers as well, and that's another big area of opportunity. And then of course, within loan repayments, the other sub-verticals that we really like such as mortgage and credit unions. So even within loan repayments, there's a diverse set of opportunities and we like all of them.

Sanjay Sakhrani, Analyst

Thanks.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Andrew Jeffrey from Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Andrew Jeffrey, Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon, guys. Appreciate you taking the question this afternoon. You threw me off at the 5:30 call, I'll admit. John, I wanted to pick up a little bit on your comments about the total payment offering, and how it allows digitization of all payments in your AP business. Can you talk about – I think you mentioned perhaps more digital remittances? Can you talk about mix today and how that affects yield and maybe, if we're at a steepening point on the curve at which we might see faster digital payments adoption and what that means for your business on a consolidated basis? And correct me, if I'm wrong AP is what about 10% of the total revenue today interchanged somewhere in that neighborhood?

Tim Murphy, CFO

That's right. Yeah. It's about half of the overall B2B business, which is total B2B is 20%.

John Morris, CEO

Yeah. Hi, Andrew. Yes, our TotalPay solution, if you think about it, the acceleration of automation and the automation of – from kind of the beginning life cycle of an invoice all the way through the life cycle through the ERP system, and then our ability to take that all the way through the payment commerce system and back and helping with the reconciliation of all the data points to go with that, we are set up really well for that. If we look at our modern technology that we've built, and if you think about it our target technology platform, we acquired with our cPayPlus platform, which only started in 2017, and so that's basically three – almost less than three years old, if you look at the total. And that is a modern technology, which takes into account all the different payment modalities that someone would like to pay an invoice with. So as we have built the technology to ingest that into our system, and out of their ERP systems accounting ERP systems, we then use our teams to enhance our vendor enablement, and then that drives the virtual card acceptance of an electronic payment there. To the extent that, that acceptance is not there then we have the ability to pay either with enhanced ACH or an ACH. Then we also have the ability to – if none of those are chosen or desired we have the ability to deliver them an actual check. As you've seen recently, we've added our relationship with Veem to have the ability to pay international payments with cross-border. And as you've also seen we talked about earlier this year and we are now live with the BPN network for – if we have the ability to intelligently route those transactions across that network. It's the TotalPay solution. So if you – for everything you want to pay as a business we can help you pay that. We will continue to expand those payment modalities on the – if someone has a desire to pay something in a certain way, we'll continue to increase that or expand that digital wallet. If you look at it also from the perspective of on the AR side of that, we – just like we're paying someone with a virtual card, they actually need to be able to accept a virtual card or in many cases someone may actually just want to accept a credit card in general. We actually continue to drive that in our AR side of our business there with our integrations. As you heard me say on the call we've now combined AR and AP as a total solution. So we were actually combining those. We think that's a very high-quality value proposition to our customers of a one-stop shop. We can help you complete commerce with the proper financial technology for both coming and going on your payment side. So we're positioned well. We understand all the technical things and the responsibilities of moving and clearing and settling funds, which we think is a very trusted position in the overall value chain but we also deliver the high-quality integrated automation of technology. We think we're well positioned for that to accelerate growth there. We are generally vertically focused, some sub-verticals inside of that, where we continue to expand our overall supplier network. We think there's some exponential effects there as we continue to grow that every single day. And we're excited about being able to continue to deliver on that. Our AP automation business is growing really well. It's growing faster than our overall business. And as we said, as well our overall B2B business is growing really nicely. So we think this sets us up really strong coming out of the fourth quarter here. We think there's – that sets us up really strong for our 2022 outlook and very excited about this. That gives us great confidence in our high teens to 20% overall organic rate.

Andrew Jeffrey, Analyst

Yes. That's helpful. I look forward to sort of hearing more quantification of that cross-sell. I think it is one of the unique attributes that you've built with REPAY. The other thing I wanted to pick up on a little bit was BillingTree and HCM. Tim, I think you said that – or RCM I should say, Tim you said that perhaps elective procedures are coming back. Can you parse out a little bit, BillingTree's growth in that pretty strong 2022 outlook? And then I also wonder if that wouldn't be a – I think you mentioned one hospital system John, but I wonder if that wouldn't be a pretty good place to emphasize the cross-sell between AP and AR too.

John Morris, CEO

Yes. I'll talk to the last piece of this. So on the healthcare side, we do think – and that is an initiative we're currently working on is our ability to cross-sell from the AR side, which is the patient engagement side of our BillingTree acquisition and our customers there be able to cross-sell them on the AP automation side of that. And we have – as you saw in an example we gave, there are hospitals in that network and we deliver a really first-class solution. We think it's one of the best solutions out there. And we understand the unique characteristics of hospitals and the things they deal with, but we also know our – as I've mentioned our supplier network is also enhanced to deal with some of the things and some of the vendors we see in the healthcare industry.

Tim Murphy, CFO

Yes. And to add to that, in addition to the consumer-driven healthcare payments with BillingTree and then we have the hospital vendor payments with CPS, we also have a part of our business within Ventanex where we serve TPAs so third-party administrators that are facilitating outbound payments to providers. And that's where we see positive momentum with elective healthcare procedures, particularly because we see that volume picking up going to providers who are given that service. So we're in a couple of different parts of healthcare, which we like in both acceptance side and outbound payments side. And as John said, there's multiple different avenues for cross-selling there.

Andrew Jeffrey, Analyst

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Bob Napoli from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Bob Napoli, Analyst

Good afternoon. I know you touched on this earlier, but I wanted to explore the improvement in the take rate further. For the third consecutive quarter, the take rate increased by 110 basis points, and you mentioned virtual cards. This appears to present a significant opportunity for virtual cards or cross-border transactions in the B2B sector. Can you provide an update on this? How much is this contributing to the take rate improvement, and do you think it has the potential for continued growth?

Tim Murphy, CFO

Yes, Bob. The adoption of virtual cards is increasing, leading to improved unit economics and a higher take rate. As we grow the adoption and penetration of virtual cards, it will enhance our take rate. Additionally, this is our first complete quarter with BillingTree, which has a take rate of 125 to 130 basis points now contributing to our results. Regarding cross-border payments, our partnership with Veem is still in the testing phase for international vendor payments, but we plan to launch that in Q1, presenting additional upside. This growth isn't reflected in the current take rate of 110 basis points or in the fourth-quarter figures; it's more focused on 2022, and we believe it will positively impact the take rate.

Bob Napoli, Analyst

How much of your B2B business is currently cross-border? And what potential do you see for that to grow?

John Morris, CEO

Yes. One of the reasons we established a commercial relationship with Veem was that we were not processing cross-border transactions at that time. As we move forward...

Bob Napoli, Analyst

At all.

John Morris, CEO

Currently we are testing. We roll that out in the first quarter, we'll give you more color as we see some of the results from that.

Bob Napoli, Analyst

We should anticipate the take rate to increase from 110 generally starting in 2022 and beyond as some of the new products are implemented, including the addition of BillingTree.

Tim Murphy, CFO

Yes. I think that 110 is a good number for the foreseeable future. But once cross-border gets some legs and becomes a bigger part of the business and as BillingTree grows and virtual card penetration grows, yes I think there's opportunity there.

Bob Napoli, Analyst

Then on the loan repayments did you see an acceleration through the quarter and into October? I know some of your clients especially on the consumer side, in particular, had a pretty good ramp-up in loan originations. So are you seeing an acceleration there?

John Morris, CEO

Yes, we are. We are. Which is one of the reasons I mentioned that we exited the quarter with a 16% organic growth. The quarter overall was really strong at 15%, but exited in September at 16%. And we are seeing increased originations with some of our larger vendors. We see the instant funding volume increase and to us since funding is a good leading indicator of origination activity because we're funding new loans and I guess, anecdotally refer from our customers that they see originations picking up going into the holiday season.

Bob Napoli, Analyst

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Timothy Chiodo from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Timothy Chiodo, Analyst

Thanks a lot for taking the question. I have one that's somewhat specific to REPAY also sort of an industry question. And then last one is a follow-up on the origination. So, for the industry, one. I just want to dig in a little bit into the value proposition. So when a supplier is offered the various choices to accept payment enhanced ACH being one of them maybe at some point down the line enhanced ACH could be working with an RTP or a faster payment rail rather than a traditional ACH. But regardless if we put one bucket of the enhanced ACH and the other of the virtual card, and big picture if we think about components around data and messaging and reconciliation and the other one being speed of settlement and the money goodness, if you will of the payment when the supplier is given the choice of those 2, what are the considerations? In other words, why does someone opt for a virtual card rather than ACH at various times?

John Morris, CEO

Yes, hi Tim, this is John. The variability can differ by industry, and in our specific sub-verticals, there's likely a greater sensitivity regarding higher ticket items. Higher ticket transactions typically necessitate different payment methods, making virtual cards less common. However, this varies by industry; for instance, we have a significantly higher virtual card usage in the automotive sector compared to healthcare, particularly in areas where actual medical bills are involved. On the vendor payment side, we observe very encouraging results, even within some hospitals. The choice between using a virtual card and other payment methods often depends on the average ticket size. Acceptance plays a crucial role as well—if a provider cannot truly accept credit cards, that leads to the use of alternative methods. This is why checks still account for more than 50% of all B2B payments. You are correct that we also derive substantial value from our software’s capability to track all data elements of an invoice throughout its lifecycle—from clearing and settlement back to reconciliation. It operates much like a ledger system, with a one-for-one mapping that provides significant value since human intervention can often be minimized. As we continue this process, we see ongoing digital transformation. The pandemic, with its shift to remote work, has positively impacted this trend, and we believe it will persist into 2022, 2023, and likely throughout 2024 and 2025 as automation evolves.

Timothy Chiodo, Analyst

Thank you, John. I have a quick follow-up. Tim, you mentioned some strengthening or accelerating originations expected during the holiday season. You also noted that your actual results accelerated as we exited September and moved into early Q4, which is encouraging. I wanted to revisit a previous discussion about the loan durations extending, which could push some repayments into Q1 and support Q1 results along with the continued acceleration in Q4. Is there any update on how that has played out?

Tim Murphy, CFO

We are very optimistic about Q3 and feel similarly positive about Q4. However, any originations related to the holiday season would likely be counted in Q1. For instance, if a loan is issued now or in early December, the payment for that loan would probably fall into Q1. The key focus for us remains on originations. Even if the loan durations have been slightly longer, we will still receive those payments; it’s just a question of timing. We continue to observe this same trend. Sure.

John Morris, CEO

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Morris for any closing remarks.

John Morris, CEO

Thank you everyone for your time today. We are very excited about our performance in the third quarter and the results we achieved. We are also optimistic about what this means for our fourth quarter and how it positions us for our 2022 year from an organic perspective. Thank you for all your questions, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant evening.