Seeking to become a dominant player in the growing school-meals payments arena, a Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. unit has announced the purchase of School-Link Technologies Inc., its fourth such acquisition in the last 10 months.
The move doubles Heartland’s stake in the market for providing point-of-sale payments systems for schools, Heartland said in an Oct. 11 press release.
Heartland School Solutions’ acquisition of Santa Monica, Calif.-based School-Link, a privately-held provider of school nutrition and point-of-sale systems for kindergarten through 12th grade institutions, expands Heartland’s reach by 10,000 schools, bringing the total number of schools it serves to some 19,000.
The Princeton, N.J.-based processor previously served 9,000 schools through purchases earlier this year of LunchBox software from Data Futures, Inc., Comalex Inc., and mySchoolbucks.com, the press release noted.
Establishing payment systems for school lunch programs represents a market that Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide have been targeting more aggressively, industry analyst Todd Ablowitz, president of Centennial, Colo.-based Double Diamond Group LLC, tells PaymentsSource.
“For anyone providing payment structure and electronic payments, the schools market is growing faster than the rest of the marketplace overall,” Ablowitz says.
The process of gaining market share in the school-meals market requires that Heartland go through a bidding process with competitors also vying to provide the point-of-sale hardware and payment services, Michael Lawler, executive director of Heartland School Solutions, tells PaymentsSource.
In addition to software and hardware for point-of-sale, Heartland also provides an online payment website for parents to pay for school lunches and activity fees with their credit cards or checking accounts, Lawler says.
“This allows schools to operate more efficiently by not having to collect and account for cash and checks,” Lawler adds. “Additionally, it provides more direct control and monitoring by the parents.”
Heartland’s school-meals payment system includes other features, including enabling schools to set up a product-ordering process, inventory management and menu planning for nutrition programs, as well as a way for parents to monitor their children’s menus online through a feature called SeeMyPlate.
Though schools sometimes face budget shortfalls, Lawler says Heartland has not experienced that problem in the school districts it serves.
By establishing an online payment alternative, schools ultimately would save money, Ablowitz contends.
“There are many other industries that likely have not begun to feel the benefits of instituting a payment system that includes an online payment option,” Ablowitz says.
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