Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. (NYSE: HPY), one of the nation's largest providers of merchant acquiring services, today announced it has acquired Debitek, a leader in prepaid and stored value solutions.
Debitek immediately provides Heartland with a proven platform in the stored value and prepaid market, particularly with respect to small-dollar payment applications.
Robert Carr, Chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems, Inc., said, "Debitek is a leader in the prepaid and stored value solutions industry with arguably the most successfully deployed technology of its kind in the United States. A prepaid and stored value solution is also an ideal platform to capitalize on the growth opportunities of small-dollar transactions, which is a large and rapidly emerging electronic payment solutions market. Debitek's substantial installed base utilizing their proprietary software provides a solid foundation for penetrating this market. We are excited about the opportunity to broaden our product offering while also entering the new markets already served by Debitek solutions."
Debitek, headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has an established client base utilizing approximately 130,000 payment devices, and an experienced and dedicated management team. The Company has a proven, reliable solution to transfer value to either Mag stripe or Chip ("Smart") cards. Among its many applications, Debitek provides its cashless solution to numerous university and business campuses across the country - including the Universities of Florida and Minnesota, Northwestern University, and BMW, Coca-Cola and Morgan Stanley - as well as the entire Federal penitentiary system.
Larry Hauser, Vice President and General Manager of Debitek, said, "We are pleased to be joining with Heartland Payment Systems. With Heartland's extensive resources and nationwide infrastructure, we can accelerate growth within our established markets as well as broaden our reach into new markets. We also envision numerous synergistic opportunities to leverage our prepaid and stored value technology with Heartland's payroll and transaction processing leadership."
Financial terms of the transaction, which was structured as a stock purchase, were not announced. Heartland believes the transaction will not have a material impact on earnings in the near term.