In 1996 George Holman was chasing up payments, losing membership sales and suffering from irregular cash flow in his Sydney gym Vital and he urgently needed a solution.
The fitness club industry was run by exercise and health enthusiasts, whose main focus was on customer service and sales. Their focus on a key business fundamental – cash flow – was often missing. A typical fitness club membership payment was one upfront payment or payments spread over a year via an honesty system. The honesty system was often a wooden box where members deposited their personal cheque or cash in an envelope with their name on it.
George identified these issues in his fitness club and on an educational visit to America he discovered that their more mature fitness industry had a solution to his problems – direct debits. He decided to give direct debits a go in his fitness club to see if it would work for him. After a hugely successful trial, where he was able to increase his membership base from 200 to 4,000 in a year, he made the decision to start a direct debit business called Ezypay.
