Company Overview

Flexent, a subsidiary of Chesapeake Bank, helps businesses finance growth by optimizing accounts receivable and inventory. This type of business financing is called factoring: Businesses can sell their outstanding accounts receivable at a discount to a company called a factor, in exchange for same-day cash. Particularly in industries like trucking, where customers may pay slowly and cash is needed quickly, Flexent’s services can provide the liquidity and flexibility necessary to maintain and scale businesses.

Flexent’s Payments Problem

At the time that Flexent Freight (formerly PDM Financial) was acquired by Chesapeake Bank in 2023, the factoring company was working with another bank to provide payments to trucking carriers. Flexent’s customers could opt to receive traditional payments using checks, ACH, or wires — all of which were often too slow or too expensive. That’s why many truckers opted for fuel cards: immediate funds, though in a less-than-ideal form.

“Factoring is all about getting money into people’s accounts quickly, and in transportation, it had been like everyone was almost forced to accept a fuel card — because the factoring company gets a kickback,” says Kevin Wood, Managing Director at Flexent. “They were making money on fuel cards, versus helping customers with a creative solution. We were one of the few who said: This is a problem. These truckers are the backbone of America and they’re getting taken advantage of by this system, forced to buy groceries for their family at a gas station.”

Meanwhile, even the carriers who could afford the higher costs of same-day ACH and wires were also running into problems. Flexent’s previous bank vendor ran on an East Coast business-hours schedule, which doesn’t work well for West Coast carriers or the 24/7 nature of trucking generally.

“At that point, our main question was, how do we solve traditional ACH?” says DJ Seeterlin, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at Chesapeake Bank. “We considered hiring more people and trying to expand our customer support hours. However, after collaborating with the Orum team on ways to solve the problem with their ‘Direct-to-Fed’ money movement solution — we realized that not only can we solve this ACH problem, but we can also add all of this additional value for our customers. The entire nature of the question changed.”

At first, Seeterlin worried that Chesapeake’s underlying infrastructure and limited engineering team would preclude them from leveraging Orum’s expanded processing windows and smart routing. But Orum’s no code option — which Seeterlin and team collaborated on and helped Orum define the business needs of — allowed Flexent to start offering instant payments and go live without writing a single line of code.

“The great advantage of working with Orum is not only the numerous product benefits but also that we could do it using our legacy tech without a huge spend to upgrade,” Seeterlin says. “We do intend to upgrade in the future, but Orum enabled a no code option so we could adopt real-time payments early and start bringing immediate value to the market.”

Flexent knew their customers would love the new options for faster payments, and they expected about a 50% to 60% participation rate. Instead, it’s 77% — far greater than the Flexent team had hoped. Flexent credits the bank-rate pricing advantages that Orum offers, which allows the company to make a margin while still offering affordable rates to truckers.

“Our carriers are very price sensitive, so every penny counts; they will drop you as a provider for literally 10 cents,” Wood says. “It shows that getting your money the way you want it, when you want it, is really worth something for them. They can use their money to fund a fuel card for cheaper gas, or they can also fund their businesses and their lives. They can spend it however they see fit, move on to the next job, and be very efficient in running their business.”

A recent PYMNTS Intelligence report showed 93% of truck drivers prefer instant payments to receive their earnings. As truckers enjoy the flexibility and speed of their payments, Wood’s sales team also enjoys the benefit of leveraging real-time payments as a massive differentiator for Flexent.
 
“I’ve talked to significantly larger organizations who are asking me, how are you solving these payments problems so quickly and overcoming all these hurdles?” Seeterlin says. “It’s because of our partnership with Orum.”

Orum’s Money Movement Solution

Orum delivered three major advantages over Flexent’s previous payments solution:

• The ability to pass along speed and pricing advantages to truckers,  setting Flexent apart in the market and freeing truckers from the need to choose between slower ACH options and expensive wires, or immediate yet limited fuel card funds. Orum’s Deliver API is built on a rare direct connection to the Federal Reserve’s payment rails as a service provider – allowing us to bring customers both speed and pricing advantages..
• Leveraged no code instant payments and ACH transfers, which allowed Flexent to enter the real-time payments space even with legacy infrastructure and limited engineering resources. This means Flexent got started offering instant payments and went live without writing a single line of code. 
• Orchestrate and optimize payment operations, eliminating the need to hire round-the-clock staff or worry about West Coast truckers subject to East Coast banking hours cut-off times. Orum orchestrates payments for speed and cost across direct connections to The Fed and other top-tier banking partners.

Instant payments are the future, and I believe all banks must get on board with that. Orum is a great way to jumpstart and make sure you’re part of that future of payments.

Why Orum’s Payment Solution is Better Than Direct-to-Bank

Orum’s simple API integration for fast, reliable payments provides three significant advantages over working directly with a bank. 

• Access all major payment rails via one solution including RTP, FedNow, Same Day ACH, ACH, and Wires. Orum's Deliver API features a rare direct connection to the Federal Reserve's payment rails as a service provider — optimizing money movement through Federal Reserve payment rails as well as via connections to additional top-tier financial partners, all to bring you payment speed and flexibility.
• Save $2 million and 2 years — that’s the typical investment required to complete a traditional bank integration, which relies on batched files and manual processes, causing delays in payment operations. With Orum’s Deliver API, you get real-time transaction details, enabling better monitoring, reporting, and analysis. Orum’s smart routing speeds up processing, minimizes errors, and reduces reconciliation issues. 
• Expedite the onboarding process by integrating Orum’s unified API-based solutions, allowing you to launch fast, reliable payments and instant bank account verification within a few days.
• Track transfers down to the penny. Our custom portal provides a real-time look at your transfers and makes it easy to reconcile balances, troubleshoot customer issues, export reports, cancel payments, search and filter, set user management permissions, and more.

Want to learn more about how Orum revolutionizes payment speed, payment certainty, and payment orchestration through unified API-based solutions? Get in touch today.

More About Chesapeake Bank

Chesapeake Bank, and its divisions Flexent and Chesapeake Payment Systems, are known for leading innovation in payments. More information can be found at www.Flexent.com or www.ches.bank.