Shift4 Payments, Inc. (Shift4) provides software and payment processing solutions in the United States (U.S.).
The merchant’s range in size from small owner-operated local businesses to multinational enterprises conducting commerce globally.
At the heart of the company’s business is its payments platform. The company’s payments platform is a full suite of integrated payment products and services that can be used across multiple channels (in-store, online, mobile, and tablet-based) and industry...
Shift4 Payments, Inc. (Shift4) provides software and payment processing solutions in the United States (U.S.).
The merchant’s range in size from small owner-operated local businesses to multinational enterprises conducting commerce globally.
At the heart of the company’s business is its payments platform. The company’s payments platform is a full suite of integrated payment products and services that can be used across multiple channels (in-store, online, mobile, and tablet-based) and industry verticals, including end-to-end payment processing for a broad range of payment types; merchant acquiring services; a proprietary omni-channel gateway capable of multiple methods of mobile, contactless, and QR code-based payments; complementary third-party software integrations; full eCommerce capabilities, including web-store design, hosting, shopping cart management, and fulfillment integrations; integrated and mobile point of sale (‘POS’) solutions; security and risk management solutions; and reporting and analytical tools.
The company offers innovative technology solutions that go beyond payment processing. Some of the company’s solutions are developed in-house, such as business intelligence and POS software, while others are powered by its network of complementary third-party applications. The company’s focus on innovation, combined with its product-driven culture, enables it to create scalable technology solutions that benefit from an extensive library of intellectual property.
The company distributes its global end-to-end payment offering as well as through its network of partners. The company’s partners comprise independent software vendors (‘ISVs’) and value-added resellers (‘VARs’). The company offers a single integration to a ovide a seamless commerce experience, enterprise grade security, analytic, a proprietary gateway, and a robust suite of technology solutions to enhance the value of their software and simplify payment acceptance. The company’s partners rely on it to provide a seamless commerce experience, enterprise-grade security, analytics, and compatibility with a wide network of other point of sale (‘POS’) solutions.
The majority of the company’s revenue is derived from processing fees, which are charged either as a percentage of end-to-end payment volume and/or as a fee per transaction. Additionally, the company generates subscription revenue from licensing its POS software, business intelligence tools, payment device management, and other technology solutions.
Shift4 Model
Payments Platform
The company’s payments platform provides omni-channel card acceptance and processing solutions across multiple payment types, including credit, debit, contactless card, Europay, MasterCard, and Visa (‘EMV’), QR Pay, and mobile wallets, as well as alternative payment methods, such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Alipay, and WeChat Pay. The company continues to innovate and evolve its payments offering as new technology and payment methods are adopted by consumers.
Through its proprietary gateway, the company’s payments platform is integrated with over 550 software suites, including some software providers in the world. In addition, it enables connectivity with payment processors, alternative payment rails, and many different payment devices. The company’s payments platform includes security features that help prevent consumer card data from entering the merchant’s environment.
The company has designed its payments platform to be:
Integrated – fully integrated and seamlessly connected, facilitating easy data capture and compatibility across all solutions;
Reliable – supports payment environments 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; and
Secure – Payment Card Industry (‘PCI’)-validated Point-to-Point Encryption (‘P2PE’) tokenization and EMV-ready (Europay, Mastercard, and Visa) solutions.
The company’s merchants have the flexibility to utilize its payments platform in one of two ways: as a gateway or as an end-to-end payment solution. Gateway merchants benefit from interoperability with many third-party payment processors. End-to-end payments merchants benefit from a single, unified vendor solution for payment acceptance, devices, POS software solutions, and a full suite of business intelligence tools. By consolidating these functions through a single, unified vendor solution, these merchants are typically able to reduce total spend on payment acceptance solutions and access gateway and technology solutions as value-added features.
Technology Solutions
The company’s suite of technology solutions is designed to streamline its customers’ business operations, drive growth through strong consumer engagement, and improve their business using rich transaction-level data.
SkyTab POS – The company provides purpose-built POS workstations pre-loaded with powerful, mission-critical software and integrated payment functionality.
SkyTab Mobile – The company’s mobile payments offering, SkyTab Mobile, provides a complete feature set, including pay-at-the-table, order-at-the-table, delivery, customer feedback, and email marketing, all of which are integrated with its proprietary gateway and Lighthouse. This unique solution is relevant for merchants ranging from small and midsize businesses (‘SMB’) to enterprises and across numerous industry verticals.
SkyTab Venue – The company’s mobile-first technology solution provides stadium, theme park, and entertainment venues with a frictionless commerce experience. The company’s SkyTab Venue solutions include mobile ordering, countertop POS, self-service kiosk, and digital wallet to facilitate food and beverage, merchandise, and loyalty, all within a white-labeled technology application that is fully integrated with its secure end-to-end payment processing platform.
Lighthouse – The company’s cloud-based suite of business intelligence tools includes customer engagement, social media management, online reputation management, scheduling, and product pricing, as well as extensive reporting and analytics.
The Giving Block – The company’s cryptocurrency donation marketplace allows donors to easily gift a variety of cryptocurrencies to over 2,000 charities.
Shift4Shop – The company’s turnkey eCommerce platform provides everything a merchant needs to build their business online. Shift4Shop also provides merchants with tools to manage their product catalog, order fulfillment, and inventory management, search-engine optimization, and secure hosting.
Marketplace – The company enables seamless integrations into complementary third-party applications, which helps reduce the number of vendors on which its merchants rely. For example, a restaurant can enable DoorDash via Marketplace and accept orders from their existing POS, dramatically simplifying implementation and eliminating manual reconciliation of multiple systems. That same restaurant can also enable payroll, timekeeping, and other human resource services, reducing the time spent on manual workflows and enhancing employee engagement. Marketplace also includes a variety of functional applications, including loyalty and inventory management.
Sales and Distribution
The company’s payments platform and technology solutions are delivered to its merchants through its distribution network. The company’s network includes thousands of partners and regional internal sales and support hubs, allowing it to provide the support that many merchants demand. The company’s distribution approach and commitment to its internal sales team and software partners are key to its go-to-market strategy.
Independent software vendors – The company’s solutions are connected into over 550 integrations with software providers, including some technology companies in the world. By integrating its payments platform into their software suites, the company’s ISVs are able to sell a comprehensive solution to the merchant.
Internal sales and support network – A significant portion of the company’s employees are dedicated to sales and customer support, which allows for superior responsiveness and oversight of the customer experience.
Enterprise relationships – In addition to SMBs, the company supports its enterprise relationships across thousands of locations. The company’s enterprise customers consist of stadiums, arenas, resorts, and airlines, among others.
Value-added resellers – The company partners with VARs to sell its solutions to merchants. These VARs include third-party resellers and organizations that provide distribution for ISVs. VARs act as trusted and localized service providers to the company’s merchants by providing them with software and services. This partnership enables the company to expand its reach and scalability by allowing a VAR to bundle its full payments and technology product suite with other value-added services provided by the VAR.
The company is selective in identifying and choosing its VAR partners, and it seeks to align its business objectives with those that have strong networks, local expertise, high-quality merchant portfolios, and trusted relationships. The company’s network of VARs provides a consistent and extensive source of new merchant acquisition, with no single VAR accounting for more than 3% of its volume for the year ended December 31, 2024.
Operations and Support Services
The company’s operations infrastructure is designed to deliver high-quality experiences to its customers and to drive efficiencies throughout the entire payment ecosystem. The company leverages its over 30 years of operating history in the hospitality sector, as well as its enterprise domain expertise, to ensure its obligations to its customers are maintained and fulfilled effectively. The company’s operations and support services include:
Merchant Operations and Support
Merchant underwriting – The company’s merchant underwriting team manages applications and risk evaluation of new merchants. The majority of the company’s merchant base operates in end markets with high card-present volume and low levels of fraud and chargeback losses. In addition, the company’s underwriting strategy offers expedited activation to merchants with a low-risk profile, which enhances their customer experience.
Merchant onboarding and activation – For enterprises, the company’s merchant onboarding and activation team works closely with its partners to facilitate a seamless transition from sales to implementation and activation. The company’s streamlined activation and automated approval process enables fast and frictionless merchant onboarding, providing it and its partners with enhanced speed-to-market. The company’s partners are typically able to board even merchants within 24 hours of submitting an application.
Merchant training – The company provides a full curriculum of training materials to its merchants via a dedicated training department and content delivery platform.
Merchant risk management – The company’s risk management operations are designed to monitor merchant accounts on an ongoing basis. This includes dedicated security and regulatory support, such as PCI compliance support, vulnerability scanning, system monitoring, and breach assistance. Once a merchant is activated, the company’s systems are configured to automatically monitor any activity.
Merchant support – The company’s merchant support team responds to inquiries from merchants seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The team provides customer support for systems integrations and other technical solutions. In addition, the company has a dedicated team of merchant account specialists that guide merchants through the payment acceptance process from onboarding to settlement and reporting. With a strong emphasis on first-call resolution, the company seeks to provide exceptional payment expertise and support for its merchants. The company trains its customer support team to identify and resolve each matter in a manner, which reduces repeat calls and improves its operational efficiency.
Software Partner Operations and Support
Software Integrations and Compliance Management – The company has a team of engineers and technical support staff dedicated to support software integrations and ensure compliance with all card brand, security, and regulatory requirements, including PCI and Payment Application Data Security Standard compliance support, system integration, and configuration guidance.
Partner Support – The company has dedicated support teams that work with its software providers to address any questions or issues. The company seeks to deliver end-to-end issue resolution by bringing all appropriate disciplines together in an integrated manner, in order to optimize partner support.
Partner Services – Through its partner-facing merchant relationship management system, the company’s partners are able to track each step of the activation process of their new merchant accounts in real-time. Through this system, the company’s partners can track their merchant portfolio, including commissions, residual payments, and even support calls/recordings, in an accurate and real-time manner. The company has added substantial automation to these processes, which is essential to ensure optimal experience, as well as financial efficiency.
Growth Strategy
The company aims to accelerate growth by increasing the payment volume processed through its integrated platform across diverse verticals, including restaurants, hospitality, venues, specialty retail, and e-commerce. The company focuses on acquiring new merchants with innovative and scalable solutions while retaining existing customers. The company continuously evolves its product offerings, such as SkyTab and advanced business intelligence tools, to address the changing needs of its merchants and empower them to grow their businesses. The company is actively extending footprint into international markets. The company leverages acquisitions and strategic partnerships to expand its market presence and integrate complementary capabilities.
Competition
For certain services and solutions, including end-to-end payments, the company competes with non-integrated payment processors (such as Chase Paymentech, Elavon, Worldpay, Fiserv, and Global Payments) and integrated payment providers (such as Adyen, Lightspeed, Shopify, Square, and Toast). For the company’s hospitality gateway offering, it competes primarily with Elavon and FreedomPay.
Trademarks
The company owns a portfolio of trademarks globally and has registered its primary trademarks, Shift4 Payments, Shift4, and SkyTab.
Seasonality
The company’s operating results and operating metrics are subject to seasonality based on historic patterns of consumer and business traveler spending behaviors, coupled with exposure to seasonality experienced by its mix of merchants. In the past, the company has experienced seasonal fluctuations in its quarterly revenue, with revenue typically strongest in its second and third quarters and weakest in its first quarter (for the year ended December 31, 2024). Other factors influencing the company’s quarterly seasonality include the timing of specific holidays in a given year, the number of business days in a quarter, and the proportion of its volume derived from various merchant businesses.
Government Regulation
In July 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (‘the Dodd-Frank Act’) was signed into law in the U.S. The Dodd-Frank Act has resulted in significant structural and other changes to the regulation of the financial services industry. Among other things, Title X of the Dodd-Frank Act established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (‘CFPB’) to regulate consumer financial products and services (including some offered by the company’s partners).
The company is subject to the rules of American Express, Discover, Interlink, Maestro, Mastercard, Visa, and other payment networks. In order to provide its services, the company must be registered either indirectly or directly as service providers with the payment networks that it utilizes. The company is registered with Visa, Mastercard, and other networks as either direct members (in relation to jurisdictions where it holds appropriate licenses) or service providers for member institutions.
Additionally, as a service provider that assists in the processing of debit and credit cards, the company is subject to the Data Security Standard (‘PCI DSS’), issued by the PCI Council. PCI DSS is a multifaceted security standard that contains compliance guidelines and standards with regard to the company’s security surrounding the physical, administrative, and technical storage, processing, and transmission of individual cardholder data.
The company is also subject to network operating rules promulgated by the National Automated Clearing House Association relating to payment transactions processed by it using the Automated Clearing House Network and to various state, federal, and foreign laws regarding such operations, including laws pertaining to electronic benefits transactions.
As a processor of personal data of the EU and the U.K. data subjects, the company is also subject to regulation and oversight in the applicable EU Member States and United Kingdom with regard to data protection legislation. The EU GDPR and the UK GDPR (collectively referred to as the ‘GDPR’) contain additional obligations on data controllers and data processors that have an establishment in the EU or the U.K. or are offering goods or services to, or monitoring the behavior of, consumers within the EU or the U.K. The company is also subject to evolving the EU and the U.K. privacy laws on cookies, tracking technologies, and e-marketing.
The company, its partners, and certain of its merchants are subject to various federal, state, and international laws prohibiting unfair or deceptive trade practices, such as Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and the prohibition against unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices (‘UDAAPs’) under the Dodd-Frank Act, and prohibiting misrepresentations and other activities related to telemarketing, such as the Telemarketing Sales Act.
The company is contractually required to comply with the anti-money laundering laws and regulations in certain countries, and in others where it holds regulatory licenses, its relevant subsidiaries are directly subject to them. For example, in the U.S., the company complies with certain provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act, as amended by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, and its implementing regulations (collectively ‘the BSA’), which are enforced by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Department of Justice. The company’s Maltese Financial Institution licensed entity is directly required to comply with the anti-money laundering law and regulations applicable in the EU as transposed into Maltese law by virtue of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and the Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism Regulation, Chapter 373 of the laws of Malta and all subsidiary legislation emanating from it. The company’s the UK Authorised Payment Institution is directly subject to the UK anti-money laundering laws and regulations. The company is also subject to anti-corruption laws and regulations, including the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (‘FCPA’), which prohibits improper payments to foreign government officials and requires accurate books and records and a system of internal accounting controls, and the similar laws of other jurisdictions where it conducts business.
The company is also subject to economic and trade sanctions programs that are administered by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (‘OFAC’), which prohibit or restrict transactions to or from, or dealings with, specified countries, their governments, and in certain circumstances, their nationals, and with individuals and entities that are specially designated nationals of those countries, narcotics traffickers, and terrorists or terrorist organizations.
Research and Development
The company’s research and development expenses, which consist primarily of third-party costs, were $4.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2024.
History
Shift4 Payments, Inc. was founded in 1999. The company was incorporated in 2019 in Delaware.
