The acquisition of Charge.com will bring Pipeline Data to the milestone of servicing over 25,000 accounts. The combined entity is expected to generate in excess of 1,000 new merchant applications monthly by year-end.

Under the terms of the agreement, Pipeline will acquire Charge.com for $7.5 million in cash and $9.5 million in shares of Pipeline Data common stock. Pipeline is required to close the transaction by December 19th of this year.

An added benefit from the merger agreement is that during the period between signing and closing the transaction, the parties have agreed that Pipeline's Alpharetta, GA wholesale processing division, Pipeline Data Processing, will service two-thirds of Charge.com's new merchant applications. While this provides an immediate financial benefit to Pipeline Data, management believes that post merger, these benefits will increase as Pipeline will service all the newly acquired Charge.com merchant agreements in-house at Pipeline's wholesale processing division.

In addition, Charge.com currently outsources all of its gateway servicing. By utilizing Pipeline's own gateway technology, taking advantage of favorable processing contracts and capitalizing on operating efficiencies, Pipeline's management believes that it will achieve better margins than Charge.com previously achieved and, in fact, may be able to accelerate Charge.com's historical rate of growth.