Aurora Payments Named Optix Rookie Partner of the Year at the 2024 Partnership Summit

In 2024, Aurora Payments named Optix Merchant Group Rookie Partner of the Year at the Aurora Partnership Summit — an honor given to the strongest-performing new partner in their network.

The award hangs in our office: a guitar mounted on the wall with the plaque beneath it. We're writing about it now, two years later, for a reason that has less to do with the trophy and more to do with what's happened since.

Aurora Payments is one of the major payment processors Optix works with. Through its partner network, Aurora works with independent organizations like ours to bring payment solutions to businesses of every size.

Rookie Partner of the Year goes to the strongest-performing new partner in that network. In plain terms: among all the partners who joined Aurora that year, our results stood out.

As with any award, we want to be careful about how we talk about it. What we can say honestly is this: merchants keep choosing Optix, they keep referring us to other business owners, and the businesses we place with Aurora stay and grow. That's what "strongest-performing new partner" looks like from the inside — word of mouth doing its work.

And it's worth saying what the award is not. It's not a paid placement, and it's not a marketing badge we bought. It was awarded by Aurora based on performance among its partners. That's it.

Because it stopped being a one-off. This year, CardConnect, a Fiserv company, named Optix a 2026 Circle of Excellence winner, recognizing us with its Emerging Partners Breakthrough Award for the most improved year-over-year growth among its emerging partners. We wrote about that award separately.

Two different processors, two years apart, each looking at our results from the outside and reaching the same conclusion. Aurora and CardConnect don't share ownership, incentives, or any reason to praise us together. What they're both responding to is the same thing: merchants placed with them through Optix stay, grow, and refer other business owners.

Recognition like this is a lagging indicator of merchant outcomes — which is exactly the kind we'd rather have than any marketing claim we could write ourselves.

Here's the part that matters most for how you read this. Optix Merchant Group is not a processor. We don't process your payments, we don't mark up interchange, and we don't work for any single provider. We're an independent broker with relationships across the top processors in the nation — Aurora Payments, CardConnect, Payroc, and others — and our job is to match your business to the right fit.

That independence is precisely why these awards are notable. Neither Aurora nor CardConnect is "our" processor — they're two of several we work with. When each of them recognized our growth, it happened because we place merchants there when that processor genuinely is the right fit — and merchants stay because the fit works. The recommendation comes first; the recognition follows.

If we only worked with one processor, an award from that processor would mean something very different. Two processors recognizing the same broker, two years apart, is the multi-processor model doing what it's supposed to do.

We're not planning to change anything except the amount of work we do for merchants. The awards are mile markers, not finish lines.

If you've been putting off a review of your processing costs, there's no better time. A free statement review takes less than 30 minutes, and there's no obligation — just an honest read of what you're paying, what you should be paying, and whether your current setup still fits your business.

Call us at (855) 999-4757 to schedule your free statement review, or reach out through our website any time.

Thank you to every merchant who referred us, stayed with us, or gave us the chance to earn your trust. Recognition like this is built on your word of mouth, and we don't take that lightly.