Heartland Invests $20 Million in Leaf
Princeton-based Heartland Payment Systems, looking to expand its mobile retail payment capabilities, has invested $20 million in Boston-based Leaf, which developed a “tablet designed for commerce” which works as a mobile extension of a retailer’s POS system. Leaf will remain independent and Heartland will not have exclusivity in terms of distribution to the payment processing or POS industries, Bostinno reports.
Heartland also works with another Boston-based mobile payment tech startup, DreamIt Ventures alum LevelUp, although Heartland does not appear on LevelUp’s investors roster on its website. LevelUp and Leaf are different though some aspects of their services appear duplicative, and there has been no word on how Heartland’s Leaf investment might impact its relationship with LevelUp. I’ve asked Heartland representatives for comment on that, and will let you know what I hear.
Update: In response to my question about how its Leaf investment would effect Heartland’s
relationship with LevelUp, I received the following response attributed to Heartland CEO
Bob Carr:
“While Heartland remains one of LevelUp’s distribution partners, our ultimate goal is to enable greater merchant choice by allowing business owners to work with the business solution providers that they deem best for their individual needs. We are excited that LevelUp has signed on to participate in the Leaf ecosystem and look forward to other providers and developers building applications for the Leaf Appstore to assist merchants in best managing their businesses.”
[Reposted with permission of Philly Tech News. The original post appeared 10/3/2013, as part of a larger article:Three big deals: SAP Ventures’ new fund; Heartland Payment invests in Leaf; LLR Partners invests in Cigital]
