Meta Payment Grows Out of Incubator

By Rob Swenson
Sioux Falls Business Journal
published: 04/20/2005

The South Dakota Technology Business Center is expected to lose a significant tenant later this year, and business leaders on both sides of the lease will celebrate the departure as a historic event. Meta Payment Systems is on track to become the first graduate of the technology center, an incubator or business accelerator for the city’s emerging knowledge community.

The tech center is designed to nurture and hold down costs for fledgling companies in technology fields. New and expanding firms can apply for temporary space in the nonprofit center. The idea driving the center is to grow local businesses that eventually will provide jobs in the community. Tenants save money during their critical start-up period through such means as shared office services and cut-rate leases in a well-wired building. Laboratory space also is available for small, research-oriented firms.

Meta Payments Systems, or MPS, has been a tenant of the center since May 2004. By the end of the year, it will move into the second floor of a bank that is under construction on Western Avenue south of 57th Street . “That’s the whole point,” said Rich Naser Jr., executive director of the center. “Get people in, get them help and move them out when they don’t need it.” Most companies probably won’t move through the system as quickly as MPS, however, Naser said. The maximum term for most companies will be three years, but lab companies may stay for up to five years.

MPS is a division of MetaBank. It provides payment-system services to banks and other businesses, mostly by computer.

“Most people don’t think of all that goes on in the background of a credit card transaction or prepaid debit card transaction, and that’s essentially what we do. We make sure all those transactions are conducted the way they are supposed to,” said Ron Butterfield , vice president of MPS.

MPS started in the tech center with five employees and has grown to 21.