If you don’t think of Atlanta as a major financial hub, a new industry group would like to change your mind.

It just struck me that here you have this enormous geographic cluster of companies here and they don’t seem to be very well known.

The American Transaction Processors Coalition, a new association focused specifically on transaction processing companies located in Georgia, hopes to raise the profile of the industry, which generates $30 billion in revenue per year in the state. ATPC says the sector is as integral to Atlanta’s economy as the film industry is to Los Angeles—and larger than some other industries tied to the state of Georgia, such as life sciences.

According to one estimate from InComm CFO Scott Meyerhoff, Atlanta’s Transaction Alley handled 85 billion transactions in 2013—around 70 percent of the total number nationwide.

“It just struck me that here you have this enormous geographic cluster of companies here and they don’t seem to be very well known,” H. West Richards, the group’s executive director, told Morris News Service.

But while the industry—which has ties to the region due in part to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s history—has significant scale, the lack of a cohesive voice for Georgia processors has tended to hurt it, according to the the news service. For one thing, the industry didn’t have much of a say in the landmark Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which banks and credit card companies weighed in on with their massive lobbying efforts.

Although ATPC didn’t officially launch until last week, at an event that featured high-profile speakers including Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, it was off to a quick start ahead of the meeting. In the past few months alone, it hosted a legislative fly-in to Washington, DC, and held a luncheon with Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal.

The group hopes to drive home the impact of the industry—which it says employs more than 40,000 people in Transaction Alley alone—on the state and national economies.

“Our goal in working with elected officials, industry leaders, universities, and chambers of commerce is to create a fertile environment for corporate growth and workforce development that benefits all of Georgia,” ATPC board member and WorldPay U.S. President and CEO Tony Catalfano said in a statement.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal speaks at a ATPC event in February. (ATPC handout photo)