Heartland Payment Systems Inc. has acquired the assets of eSecure Peripherals Inc., a provider of card readers for vending machines.
Heartland, which is trying to push card acceptance into market segments that have traditionally accepted only cash, announced the purchase Monday. The price was not disclosed.
The processor has also created a micropayments division to promote the use of cards in parking, vending machines, laundries, photocopy shops, and other markets.
Heartland, of Princeton, N.J., said Monday that it had hired Ron Farmer as executive director of the new division. Mr. Farmer was previously the chief executive of Revenue Technologies Corp., a business management software vendor that was acquired by Oracle Corp. this month.
Allan Brown, the president and founder of eSecure, of Brossard, Quebec, will join the micropayments division as director of micropayment products.
Robert O. Carr, Heartland's chairman and CEO, said in a press release that "the micropayments space is one of the biggest growth opportunities for Heartland today. The nature of payments is changing, and an array of transactions — once the exclusive domain of cash and coin — is now being completed with plastic."
