Hypercom Corporation was an Australian company which was a pioneer of electronic payment processing hardware and software. It was acquired by rival VeriFone in 2011.
History
Hypercom was founded by Hungarian born George Wallner, David Saul, Brian Pascoe, and Leslie Fritz in Sydney Australia in 1978. It went on to dominate the South Pacific region in terms of payment terminals. In 1988 the company signed a deal with American Express to provide its terminals to them in the US. To consolidate the deal, Hypercom moved its head office from Australia to Arizona in the US. It then faced head-to-head competition with VeriFone on its home market.[1]
On April 4, 2011, Ingenico announced its agreement to acquire Hypercom's U.S. Payment Systems Business prior to the close of the VeriFone acquisition [2] On the same day it announced that its UK and Spanish operations would be sold separately to a private investment company and this business was renamed as Spire Payments.[3]