Have you ever used the Wayback Machine?

The Wayback Machine allows users to browse through over 150 billion web pages archived from 1996 to just a few months ago. I used it to craft this brief history of Vantage.

We launched our first web presence as far back as the end of 1997 but the first archive I find is a view from October 1999. That’s a decade ago and just months before the dot-com bubble crash. If I recall, we used Microsoft FrontPage to develop these early versions (we still do all our web development in house today): http://web.archive.org/web/19991004142744/http://www.vantagecard.com/.

And while our site has grown, our messaging hasn’t really changed. In the first paragraph on the October 2000 home page we begin to push the concept of “Interchange qualification management” (seriously who else was talking with merchants about managing Interchange back in 2000?!): http://web.archive.org/web/20001023133448/http://www.vantagecard.com/.

We started to board our first Level 3 merchant accounts in 2000 and by October we had Level 3 commercial card processing featured on our web site:http://web.archive.org/web/20010302100308/www.vantagecard.com/Level3.html

The same things we were warning merchants about in October 2000 are unfortunately still things merchant must watch for in our industry today:http://web.archive.org/web/20001012233531/www.vantagecard.com/faq.htm.

The mood of the nation was very patriotic right after September 11, 2001 as you can see from this Wayback view: http://web.archive.org/web/20010923125210/http:/vantagecard.com/. On this 2001 home page we warn merchants about long-term contracts and cancellation fees.

By May 2003, the Vantage Points merchant loyalty rewards program had its own landing page: http://web.archive.org/web/20030601211729/vantagecard.com/html/right_vantagepoints.htm.

In December 2003, over 2 years after September 11, we were still flying the American flag.  And we were still working to provide “Merchant Negotiating Tips” and “Important Alerts” of what pitfalls to avoid: http://web.archive.org/web/20031226085735/http:/www.vantagecard.com/.

Talk about consistency, by February 2004 the format of site began to take shape as what you will recognize today over 5 years later: http://web.archive.org/web/20040208154611/http:/www.vantagecard.com/.  Are we getting boring yet, with the same old message about watching contract terms that we are still harping on to this day: http://web.archive.org/web/20040204191618/www.vantagecard.com/terms/default.asp?tl=3&sl=0

In April 2004, on the home page under News Alerts, we feature “April Interchange & Trends” were we encourage readers to learn more about credit card processing Interchange rates: http://web.archive.org/web/20040525100450/http://www.vantagecard.com/.We’ve been tracking Interchange changes from this link ever since.

Fast forward 5 years to 2009 and you find a world were a Google search on “merchant services” turns up 21,200,000 results in just 0.19 seconds (that’s over 21 million results!).

Looking at the marketing of many of these companies, you may get a glimpse of the positive influence Vantage has had on the payments industry. As the saying goes we’ve been preaching “Interchange and Month-to-Month contracts” when “Interchange and Month-to-Month contracts” wasn’t cool. And we are still waiting for another provider to copy our Vantage Points merchant rewards program, now in its 7th year.

If you are looking for a solid leader as a payment processing partner, look no further than Vantage. Or take a look back. We’ve been advocating for you the entire time.