Tuesday, November 1, 2022
Following in the footsteps of NCR Corp., which acquired JetPay in October 2018, and Deluxe Corp., which added First American Payment System’s omnichannel payments platform to its capabilities stack in April 2021, Bluefin today disclosed its acquisition of TECS Payment Systems, a global provider of omnichannel payment solutions.
With growing demand to meet consumers across multiple shopping channels, Bluefin representatives positioned the TECS acquisition as a bid to drive secure commerce acceptance, whether transactions are done in-person, online, or via digital wallets or mobile apps, to ensure data privacy and security.
Citing data from Insider Intelligence and Fortune Business Insights, respectively, Bluefin projects the ecommerce channel alone will reach $6.169 trillion in 2023, practically doubling 2019 volumes of $3.351 trillion.
John M. Perry, CEO at Bluefin, welcomed TECs staff, clients and partners to the organization, which he said will serve 34,000 merchants and nearly 300 global partners in 55 countries.
“This combination brings together two companies that focus relentlessly on meeting merchant needs for next-generation payment processing and management as well as the secure exchange of PHI and PII data with PCI-validated encryption and tokenization,” he said in a statement.
Fazlollah Rostamian, founder and CEO at TECS, agreed the well-matched partners have “natural synergies,” adding, “We are excited about what the strength of our combined resources will mean for our customers, and the many ways we can help businesses provide the payment experience that their customers demand.”
With robust integrations underway at Bluefin and Austria-based TECS, representatives from both organizations stated combined capabilities will expand opportunities and global reach. Bluefin, for example, will add cross-border, omnichannel payment and smartPOS solutions to its solutions suite.
TECS SmartPOS devices are currently offered in TECS app stores and terminal management systems, Bluefin noted, and the TECs payment gateway offers multicurrency processing, fraud deterrence and detection, a gift card and loyalty program and proprietary 3D Secure solution supported by major card brands.
TECS representatives said they look forward to integrating Bluefin’s data security, encryption and tokenization solutions, including Bluefin’s PCI-validated point-to-point encryption for POS and the ShieldConex data security platform for ecommerce, which tokenizes online payment and healthcare transactions to protect personally identifiable information and protected health information.
As researchers have noted, growing adoption of digital commerce has inspired innovative partnerships between tech firms and merchant acquirers, some of which have inevitably resulted in mergers and acquisitions.
However, participants insist their mergers had more to do with meeting customers where they shop, and meeting partners where they serve customers, than challenging or competing with traditional merchant acquirers and payment processors.
NCR, for example, created a technology-as-a-service model aimed at providing clients an array of on-demand products and services, according to Dirk Izzo, senior vice president and general manager at NCR Hospitality.
“With more than 20,000 service professionals, NCR can deploy, manage, monitor and maintain a restaurant's technology suite, whether it's NCR's or not,” Izzo said in a July 2022, interview with <>The Green Sheet, adding that JetPay and other recent acquisitions have expanded NCR’s software architecture, breadth of services and flexible commercial models that enable NCR to work seamlessly and maintain connectivity at corporate and franchisee levels.
Barry McCarthy, CEO at Deluxe, noted that acquiring First American Payment Systems will help the 100-year-old company, with annual software and service volumes of $2.8 trillion, remain relevant and competitive in the ever-changing payments sphere.
“This is a major, logical and responsible next step in our transformation,” McCarthy said in a statement. “With electronic payments playing an increasingly important role across the economy, the addition of First American’s independent, leading payments platform will advance our One Deluxe strategy and our overall growth trajectory.” 
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