science

Heartland Payment Systems

Heartland Payment Systems is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Heartland Payment Systems rather than just read about it. In short: Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. is an American payment processing and technology provider. Founded in 1997, Heartland Payment Systems' last headquarters were in Princeton, New Jersey.

Key takeaways

Heartland Payment Systems belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Heartland Payment Systems to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Heartland Payment Systems from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. is an American payment processing and technology provider. Founded in 1997, Heartland Payment Systems' last headquarters were in Princeton, New Jersey. The company was acquired by Global Payments for $4.3 billion in 2016. Heartland Payment Systems provides payment processing for more than 275,000 business locations in the United States and processes more than 11 million transactions a day and more than $80 billion in transactions a year, as of 2014. In addition to payment processing, Heartland has developed or acquired businesses in payroll processing, gift card and campus card, point of sale systems, school payments and nutrition, network management, mobile payments and ordering, eCommerce, billing, and lending services.

History Heartland was co-founded by Robert O. Carr in Princeton, New Jersey in 1997. In 2001, the company received a $40 million private equity investment from Greenhill Capital Partners, L.P. (New York, NY), LLR Partners, Inc. (Philadelphia, PA), and their affiliated investment funds. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange on August 11, 2005.

Security breach

On January 20, 2009, Heartland announced that it had been "the victim of a security breach within its processing system in 2008". The data stolen included the digital information encoded onto the magnetic stripe built into the backs of credit and debit cards; with that data, thieves can fashion counterfeit credit cards by imprinting the same stolen information onto fabricated cards. One estimate claimed 100 million cards and more than 650 financial services companies were compromised; at the time, it was characterized as the largest ever criminal breach of card data. An American computer hacker, Albert Gonzalez, was sentenced in March 2010 to 20 years in prison for his role in the hacking ring that broke into the Heartland computer systems. In February 2018, two Russian hackers were sentenced for a string of hacking including the Heartland breach. On May 1, 2009, Visa and Heartland issued a statement that Heartland successfully validated its compliance with PCI DSS and was returned to Visa's list of PCI DSS Validated Service Providers.

End-to-end encryption On May 24, 2009, Heartland commercially launched their E3, an end-to-end encryption technology designed to safeguard credit and debit card account information from the moment of card swipe and through the Heartland network. Gartner Analyst Avivah Litan stated that Heartland "is basically leading the way for the rest of the industry." She also characterized its plan for end-to-end encryption as the first effort of its kind in the US. Other processors including Worldpay US and several First Data ISO's announced end-to-end encryption initiatives soon after Heartland announced theirs.

Open letter to the electronic payments industry Following a keynote address to the Strategic Leadership Forum of the Electronic Transactions Association in October 2013, Heartland CEO Bob Carr published an open letter to the electronic payment processing industry urging an end to unethical, dishonest and illegal pricing practices, referencing the practice of deliberately falsifying interchange rates, deliberately falsifying merchant category codes (MCC), and the use of confusing small print to extort large fines from merchants.

Litigation against Mercury Payment Systems In January 2014, Heartland filed a lawsuit against the company Mercury Payment Systems, an electronic payment provider, for alleged false advertising and "other deceptive trade practices". The lawsuit concerns interchange fees charged by credit card networks and alleges violations of the Lanham Act and state laws.

Heartland Secure In May 2014, Heartland Secure is launched. Backed by a breach warranty, Heartland Secure combines three technologies—EMV, end-to-end encryption and tokenization—to provide merchants with security and guard against monetization of stolen card data.

Merger with Global Payments In April 2016, Heartland and Global Payments completed their merger agreement. The combined company, Global Payments Inc., is publicly traded (NYSE: GPN), and has more than 8,500 employees worldwide.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Heartland Payment Systems

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Heartland Payment Systems claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Heartland Payment Systems before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Heartland Payment Systems ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Heartland Payment Systems

In research: Heartland Payment Systems appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Heartland Payment Systems in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Heartland Payment Systems is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2005 initial public offerings, 2016 mergers and acquisitions, American companies established in 1997, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Heartland Payment Systems outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Heartland Payment Systems in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Heartland Payment Systems means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Heartland Payment Systems out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Heartland Payment Systems in simple terms?

Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. is an American payment processing and technology provider. Founded in 1997, Heartland Payment Systems' last headquarters were in Princeton, New Jersey.

Why does Heartland Payment Systems matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Heartland Payment Systems?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Heartland Payment Systems.