LEXINGTON, Ky. -- EchoSat Inc., a leading provider of payments security, managed firewall and network solutions, has acquired the SmartLink division of Heartland Payment Systems Inc.
With the addition of Heartland SmartLink’s secure payment gateway (SPG) and managed network services, EchoSat will serve more than 21,000 merchant locations in the petroleum, convenience-store, quick-service restaurant (QSR) and supermarket industries.
EchoSat also has entered into a channel partner agreement whereby Heartland’s national network of sales professionals will continue to promote the EchoSat SPG, PaySafe SPG, SmartLink Platinum and managed network services solutions to merchants in new and existing channels.
EchoSat operates a high-speed, redundant SPG network that allows merchants and businesses of all types to transmit vital payments data securely on any broadband connection accessed via digital subscriber line (DSL), cable, wireless or satellite. EchoSat also offers PaySafe SPG, a managed firewall solution that provides network segmentation, security and redundancy for payments data while protecting Internet Protocol (IP)-based point-of-sale (POS) systems from external and internal breach. Critical payments traffic is isolated to EchoSat’s SPG network and backed up with high-speed cellular connections from each retail location.
"EchoSat has provided the core of the Heartland SmartLink secure payments solution since its inception in 2010. Heartland has always been at the forefront of payments security, and we look forward to assisting them in continuing to deliver innovative security and redundancy options to their merchants and retailers through our SPG and PaySafe SPG products," said Mark Carl, CEO of EchoSat.
"We are excited about acquiring the SmartLink division of Heartland and the increased scale this transaction adds to EchoSat; however, we are most excited about our new partnership with Heartland and their proven ability to successfully sell and help expand our managed firewall and network solutions," Tom Wimsett, chairman of EchoSat and a 30-year veteran of the payments industry, said.
“EchoSat has provided us reliable products and outstanding service," said Michael Lawler, president of strategic markets group for Heartland. "We look forward to continuing our collaboration with EchoSat to provide secure, reliable, managed firewall and network solutions to those entrepreneurs that we respectfully serve."
Heartland, one of the largest payment processors in the United States, delivers credit, debit and prepaid card processing and security technology through Heartland Secure and its comprehensive Heartland breach warranty. Heartland also offers POS, mobile commerce, e-commerce, marketing solutions, payroll solutions, and related business solutions and services to more than 300,000 business and educational locations nationwide. The Princeton, N.J., company recently announced a merger with Atlanta-based Global Payments Inc.
Founded in 1973, Lexington, Ky.-based EchoSat provides payments security, managed firewall and network solutions for retail outlets in many vertical markets, as well as managed network and firewall services to protect point-of-sale systems from security breaches. EchoSat is a Level 1 compliant PCI-DSS service provider and has developed a powerful set of PCI-DSS compliant data security and network control systems designed to ensure critical data is protected and reliably delivered. These products are geographically redundant to maximize availability. EchoSat currently facilitates more than 120 million electronic payment transactions per month at retail sites across North America.
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