Heartland School Solutions, a division of Heartland Payment Systems®, one of the nation’s largest payments processors, has acquired School-Link Technologies, Inc., a privately held provider of comprehensive K-12 school nutrition and point-of-sale (POS) solutions. Over the past 10 months, Heartland also acquired three other providers in the K-12 space to establish a market-leading position in the K-12 school nutrition and POS technology industry. These acquisitions included LunchBox, an integrated school nutrition and POS management application; Comalex Inc., software for school nutrition programs and POS systems; and MySchoolBucks.com, a website and online service for parents to pay for their child’s school meals and student activity fees using a credit or debit card or via electronic check. Heartland now serves more than 19,000 K-12 public schools across the United States, representing almost 20 percent market share.
“Heartland’s strategic acquisition of these premier K-12 service providers positions us as the market leader and will have a meaningful impact on our future growth,” said Bob Carr, Heartland’s chairman and chief executive officer in a prepared statement. “Heartland School Solutions provides a single, powerful suite of payment processing solutions to help take K-12 school nutrition programs to the next level of ease of use and innovation.”
Heartland’s full suite of front- and back-of-the-house K-12 school nutrition and POS technology solutions includes:
- Online Portal Capability – Online payment system solutions that offer major benefits for both parents and the school, enabling parents to pay for school meals, view their child's lunchroom purchases and get nutritional information in one central place. Parents can set up automatic email reminders and make payments for their children even if they attend different schools. The functionality can also be easily expanded to enable parents and students to pay for things at school beyond the lunchroom, such as athletic tickets, yearbooks, t-shirts and school store items.
- Point-of-Sale Solutions – A full-service POS system that automates and streamlines school nutrition operations to help schools better track purchases, manage Free and Reduced Meal Applications and back-of-the-house reporting.
- Back Office Solutions – A comprehensive school nutrition system to streamline ordering, inventory management and menu planning.
- SeeMyPlateTM – A Heartland service that allows parents to see their children’s school plates. This allows parents to monitor their children’s meals, help educate students and parents about nutrition and empower them to make healthy decisions.
Michael Lawler, executive director of Heartland School Solutions, added, “Many school districts across the country are experiencing tight budgets that don’t leave much room for large investments. Heartland’s robust K-12 solutions will enable our customers to increase operational efficiencies, lower expenses and generate additional revenue in the school nutrition program, and in other school activities where payments take place.”
Preston Todd Advisors, a leading buy-side M & A advisory firm specializing in the payments and payments technologies sectors, served as advisor to Heartland in the School-Link and LunchBox transactions.
For more information about Heartland School Solutions, visit HeartlandPaymentSystems.com/School, call (800) 788-9575 or email [email protected].
