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June 15, 2026
HORTONVILLE – For two and a half decades, Co-founder Les Van Ornum said family-owned and -operated Merchants’ Choice has worked to provide curated payment processing solutions to businesses across Wisconsin and beyond.
A lot, he said, has changed over the years.
Van Ornum said he began his career in finance as a commercial banker for Outagamie County Bank – now Wells Fargo.
“I’m really familiar with credit card processing, and my sister also does credit card processing [sales] in Florida,” he said. “That made me realize my [interest]… I thought, ‘Well, it sounds like a good business we can get into.’”
However, Les’s daughter and Merchants’ Choice Member Partner Trisha Handrich said the business of credit card processing has changed drastically over time.
“As a commercial baker, [my dad] worked with businesses all the time, and way back then, they would actually take their slips into the bank when they took credit cards,” she said. “He knew that side of the business for sure, [but after] my aunt got into the [sales] business…, it just seemed like a good fit.”
Trisha said her dad has “always been an entrepreneur at heart” – founding and owning several businesses with his wife and fellow Merchants’ Choice Co-founder, Helen.
“My dad and Helen were always entrepreneurs,” she said. “They had different businesses in between when he was a commercial banker… I basically worked for them, or with them, since I was 16, and I’m 50 years old now.”
A University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (UWO) graduate, Trisha said after a short stint with an outside employer, her journey led her back to working with her dad and Helen – who had just founded Merchants’ Choice in 2001.
“I got a finance and marketing degree, and tried working for a big corporation [for] a little bit, [but I] didn’t like it, and started working with [my dad and Helen] again,” she said.
Following in her mother’s footsteps, Trisha’s daughter, Brielle Wunderlich, said she also attended UWO before returning to work for the family business.
“They allowed me to come in here and do an internship to learn about the business,” she said. “Then, when I went to college, my mom [said], ‘You should try something else…,’ and still after that, I graduated from UWO with a business management degree [with a focus] in entrepreneurship. So, pretty much by that point, by the end of college, I knew I was coming here.”
From ‘full-blown’ to ‘standalone’ systems
Meeting clients face-to-face, Trisha said, has been a pillar of Merchants’ Choice since its founding.
“[My dad and Helen’s] big thing was always customer service – actually meeting people, not being on a ‘1-800’ number,” she said. “Being something different has always been our philosophy.”
One large point of difference for Merchants’ Choice in the industry, Trisha said, is its deep understanding of the credit card payment process and how they use that knowledge to help clients.
“Just because you use a credit card somewhere doesn’t mean they instantly get that money,” she said. “Usually, there’s a lag of one to two business days, and sometimes money can get held up. I had a guy who works with a local county who ran a $500,000 transaction. That’s [when] we work with them to make sure that money doesn’t get held [up].”
Depending on how businesses process customers’ credit card payments, Trisha said their money could be held or subject to access fees.
“They unfortunately have to pay a transaction fee to actually get their money depending on what kind of card you use as a consumer,” she said. “Working with local businesses, we always say their passion is their business, not how they’re going to get their money.”
Today, Trisha said there are roughly a dozen companies – such as Square, Stripe, PayPal and others – who primarily process credit card payments.
Merchants’ Choice, she said, works with “six or seven of them” to curate their services to each client’s individual needs.
“We can sell all the way from full-blown POS systems down to [a] standalone terminal that just sits there,” she said. “There isn’t one single route anymore like it used to be…, so we have so many different options.”
Emerging technology
As technology has evolved over the years, Helen said so, too, has Merchants’ Choice’s business model.
“The ‘knuckle buster’ [manual card imprinter] was a big thing,” she said. “Les would go and sign up the merchant, get them on board, and then I would go out and reprogram their little square box, and that’s that. Now, that doesn’t happen that way anymore. You don’t reprogram a little box. There’s a lot of dedicated technology.”
Per mccs-wi.com, Merchants’ Choice services range from POS sales and installation, merchant account management, online and mobile payment processing, software integrations and more.
“We have apps you can use on your phone,” Brielle said, “so even if you’re a small business and you want to have it on there [for] tap-to-pay, you can even use your phone as a terminal… That’s even something new for us this year.”
As payment technology continues to advance, Helen said their involvement in industry-specific networking opportunities – such as Trisha’s seat on the Elavon | U.S. Bank Advisory Committee – helps Merchants’ Choice stay ahead of the curve.
Helen said Trisha’s involvement provides valuable industry knowledge and connections with the people shaping regulations, helping the business stay at the forefront of new developments.
“Trisha has already been introduced to [new trends/technologies/etc.] before anybody around here really even knows anything about it, and we can test it or see if it’s worth it,” she said.
Being the youngest person on the team, Brielle said her focus is currently on new and emerging technology.
“Software is a huge thing where people are creating their own systems,” she said. “They’re starting to get into our industry, so that might be something we look at in the future – creating our own software.”
Though they specialize in face-to-face sales, Les said Merchants’ Choice can serve clients across the U.S. – with remote sales offices prioritizing high-quality customer service regardless of their location.
“There are people out there [who do] processing, but not who care [more] about the customer [than we do],” he said. “Our retention is twice as high as the industry average.”
Trisha said their dedication to long-term relationships and saving clients’ money are ultimately the largest contributing factors to their retention rate.
“We talked to so many small businesses that are starting [out] – they’ll go get signed up with this full-blown POS system they’re paying hundreds to thousands of dollars a month for, and they don’t even know how to work it,” she said. “With us…, the relationship [is about] education, because we want to grow with their business.”
Despite, technically, being retired since 2020, Trisha said Les is still heavily involved in business operations – passing along his more than 25 years of experience to the family.
“He misses the people,” she said. “I think our dynamic as a family business is not ordinary for most family businesses, truly.”
Les said Merchants’ Choice has no problem being entirely family-owned and -operated – with each member of their team unified under a collective, customer-focused mission.
“Some people say it’s hard to work with your family, but I’ll tell you what, it’s been really easy to work with this family because we’re all on the same page,” he said. “We all want to help people and do the right thing for them.”
For more information on Merchants’ Choice and its service, visit its website.
