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Heartland Payment Solutions

“Can Heartland—now a Global Payments subsidiary—become the unified payments, payroll, POS, and lending platform that SMBs and mid-market businesses choose over fragmented point solutions?”

Founded1997
HQOklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
FoundersBob Carr
Latest roundAcquired by Global Payments for ~$4.3B (2016)
IndustryVertical SaaS / Payments & Business Services
The story

Founded in 1997 as a pure-play credit card processor for US merchants, Heartland expanded over nearly two decades into a full business services platform—adding payroll, POS systems, gift cards, school payments, and lending. Acquired by Global Payments in 2016 for $4.3B, it became a vertically integrated SMB-focused subsidiary, notably launching Heartland Capital (a Lendio-powered lending marketplace) and deeper payroll capabilities. As of 2025, Heartland is being folded into the Global Payments brand, with its product suite remaining intact but rebranded. The strategic shift is from standalone payment processor to an all-in-one SMB operating platform competing with Toast, Square, and Clover.

Last 12 months
2025-12
Product timeline
1997
Founded as Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. by Bob Carr in Princeton, NJ, focused on credit card processing for small and mid-size businesses.· pivot
2002
Entered processing services agreement with Vital Processing Services for merchant services infrastructure.· banking
2014
Grew to process more than $80B in transactions annually across 275,000+ business locations; expanded into payroll, gift cards, campus cards, POS, school payments, and lending.· pivot
2016
Acquired by Global Payments Inc. in a $4.3B cash-and-stock transaction, becoming an operating subsidiary under the Global Payments brand.· acquisition
2020
Launched Heartland Capital, a lending marketplace powered by Lendio, offering SMB loans from $5K to $5M across 80+ lenders.· lending
2025
Began transitioning brand to Global Payments while retaining Heartland product suite; heartland.us privacy policy updated under Global Payments umbrella.· pivot
Regulated entities
2
regulatory licences held by Heartland Payment Solutions
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
5 layers disclosed in Heartland Payment Solutions’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Heartland Payments (self-operated)Global Payments (parent/self-operated)
Lending
in the full report
Payroll
in the full report
Sponsor bank
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
9 more providers across 4 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.