The deal to sell the merchant services to unit to consortium of BankCard employees follows Quisitive’s recent sale of its PayiQ business so it can concentrate on its Microsoft cloud business. Quisitive purchased BankCard USA in May 2021 for $100 million in cash and stock. a death that was then worth about $166 million. It is selling the unit for $40 million in cash with the shares being returned to the company. The purchasers include Shawn Skelton, Scott Hardy and Jason Hardy/ PayiQ, formerly known as LedgerPay, was sold to Fulcrum IT Partners in January in a deal valued at $41 million, including an $18 million earn out and $27 million in Fulcrum shares. Quisitive also acquired the 20 percent of the former Ledger Pay, launched in 2020, it did not own for 4,248,000, about $1.4 million at recent trading prices. The payments business had $45.3 million in revenue for the nine months ended September 30. Quisitive has not reported its 2023 results but the figure annualizes to around $60 million. The high hopes Quisitive had for payments was shown when the company purchased BankCard, a move that was described as “transformational for Quisitive payment solutions.” In a prepared statement, CEO Mike Reinhart said the BankCard sale would enable it “to focus resources on our core Microsoft cloud and AI business where we have meaningful scale, de-risk the organization, reduce volatility and meaningfully strengthen the balance sheet.” Quisitive said the BankCard deal will reduce debt by $34.6 million. Along with PayiQ, it was also a business segment that consumed resources, including executive attention, as Quisitive worked to receive approvals from the institutions in the payments business, such as Visa and MasterCard.