Hypercom USA has changed its name to Equinox Payments LLC in a move that one analyst says should take no one by surprise.
“It’s necessary to brand the new company,” Todd Ablowitz, president of Double Diamond Group LLC, a Centennial, Colo.-based consulting firm, says of the name change.
That “new company” came into being in August when Gores Group LLC, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, purchased Hypercom Corp.’s U.S. terminal business. At the same time, VeriFone Systems Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based terminal vendor, bought most of Hypercom’s operations outside the U.S. (
After the months of confusion surrounding the purchase, changing the name of the U.S. operations to Equinox eventually could help the market sort out the players, Ablowitz tells PaymentsSource.
First, however, Equinox will have to spend millions establishing the new name and linking the company’s past to its future, Ablowitz says. But rebranding a business-to-business company with a “finite” customer base costs much less than changing the identity of a consumer company with a much larger clientele, he notes.
“There’s work to be done when you rebrand, but companies do it all the time,” Ablowitz says.
Payment industry name changes have worked out well for companies in the past, he contends, citing U.S. Bancorp’s merchant-processor subsidiary name switch to Elavon Inc. from Nova Information Systems Inc.
“Everybody figured that out,” Ablowitz says of the change, which occurred in 2008.
Moreover, the Equinox name fits the company, Clint Jones, the firm’s president, said in a Sept. 30 press release announcing the change.
“The name Equinox embodies our strategic vision for the company: industry-leading hardware complemented with industry-leading software,” he said in the release.
New name aside, Equinox has pledged to avoid disruptive change at the company (
Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Equinox manufactures, sells and maintains payment terminals and related accessories previously offered in the U.S. by Hypercom, including the T4200 countertop, M4200 mobile and L5000 customer-activated product, the release said. EMV and contactless products include the L5300 and L5200.
“Former Hypercom USA product names will remain unchanged but will be branded Equinox or be cobranded Equinox and Hypercom,” the release said.
Equinox will continue to support Hypercom-branded products and services in the U.S., according to the release.
Ingenico SA, a French-based terminal supplier, previously had attempted to buy Hypercom’s U.S. operations, but the U.S. Justice Department thwarted that purchase, contending the acquisition would have decreased the number of terminal suppliers operating in the U.S. and thus would have made the market less competitive (
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