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Heartland Payments Systems Inc., a payments processing company, has agreed to buy Chockstone Inc., a loyalty program and gift card provider, the company said during its conference call with analysts on Tuesday. Based in Princeton, N.J., Heartland sees loyalty marketing and gift cards as complementary services to offer to those it already provides to merchants, Robert O. Carr, Heartland Chairman and CEO, said during the call. "Gift card was the largest outsourced part of our business, and that was very motivating to us to do the Chockstone deal," Carr said. The company did not disclose the deal price, but Robert Baldwin Jr., Heartland president and chief financial officer, said the deal would close "in a couple of weeks" and would be immaterial to Heartland's fourth-quarter earnings. Heartland will look for other acquisitions over the next 15 months to expand the number of products it can offer, Carr said. Heartland and Chockstone did not return calls for comment.
