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A Sales Rep’s Guide to Navigating the Payment Industry Mergers

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First, Global Payments bought Heartland Payment Systems for $4.3 billion (details) in 2016. Then, Vantiv bought WorldPay (details) for $10.4 billion last year, and now in 2019 we are seeing the third mega payments acquisition.

2019 started with a bang – Fiserv acquired FirstData for $22 billion and shortly thereafter Fidelity National Services acquired the newly formed WorldPay (the resulting entity of Vantiv’s acquisition of WorldPay) for $34 billion.

The latest of 2019’s monster mergers is Global Payments merger with TSYS – a $21.5 billion deal – bringing 2019’s total to $77.5 billion. That’s just $2 billion shy of the entire GDP of Guatemala.

These numbers are crazy. What does it all mean?

[Read more…]

Understanding Payment Processor Cancellation & Closure Fees

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Understanding that $295 and up to change your processor

I love Netflix – it’s a great service. I feel like I get a bargain for the $9 or $10 per month I spend. Netflix continues to invest in quality content, the deliverability is stellar, and the interface is super friendly. So go buy some stock already… Seriously though, it’s a great service. But even a great service might get old. I may get tired of it. I may move to a Yurt on the side of a mountain in northern Wyoming without reliable internet service. If I were to cancel my Netflix service, I would be charged $0.

So why is it that if you want to cancel a merchant processing agreement, you have to pay anywhere from $300 to $3,000 to do so? There’s no “cost” to cancel a merchant agreement [Read more…]

2017 Spells the End for Windows XP Point of Sale Terminals

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Despite Microsoft announcing its official End of Life on April 8th 2014, many businesses still use Windows XP workstations and point of sale terminals. Who can blame them? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it right? Wrong…

Since its release in 2001, Microsoft issued over 700 updates, many of which were identified as critical to its security. While the technology space has changed incredibly since April of 2914, Microsoft has issued 0 updates – widening existing holes in data integrity.

As of yesterday, January 1, 2017 merchants no longer have the ability to connect securely through an SSL certificate using the SHA-1 security algorithm.

What does this mean?

It means that if you are processing credit cards through a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 operating system, you can’t kick the can down the road anymore. Entities hosting secure transactions are upgrading to a new algorithm – SHA-2 – resulting in a merchant’s inability to process credit cards on their point of sale device.

What can you do?

While major players like Heartland aren’t completely pulling the plug on SHA-1 immediately, it is imminent – think weeks not months. It’s time to upgrade your software.

Isn’t that expensive? It might be.

I can help – reach out here on LinkedIn or give me a call and I can help you put a plan in place to make this migration as easy as possible. Heartland has business financing programs available and backup processing systems so your business can keep on track for 2017 and beyond.