Shift4
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| Shift4 Corporation | |
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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1994 |
| Headquarters | Las Vegas, NV, USA |
| Key people | CEO: J. David Oder, COO: Katherine A. Oder, CTO: J.D. Oder II |
| Industry | Payment Processing |
| Products | $$$ ON THE NET, Its Your Card, FraudSentry |
| Revenue | N/A |
| Operating income | N/A |
| Net income | N/A |
| Employees | 85 (2007) |
| Slogan | N/A |
| Website | Shift4 |
Shift4 Corporation is a provider of Payment Processing services based in Las Vegas, Nevada. The company's core product is payment gateway services.
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[edit] History
Shift4 Corporation This organization started out in Irvine, CA and was incorporated in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1994. Shift4 started as a spin off from an accounting software application firm for which J. David Oder, Katherine A. Oder, Kevin Cronic, Steven Sommers and J.D. Oder II used to work.
As its first historical product offering, Shift4® took on the novel design concept of auditing credit card transactions prior to their submission to the merchant bank, and developed the Microsoft DOS application $$$ In the Bank® (Dollars in the Bank). Many hotels including the Hilton hotel chain and Las Vegas Casinos took notice and hundreds of site licenses were sold for use. What made this software unique was its ability to pre-authorize, voiding transactions later if necessary, and to send full data to banks during authorization of credit cards. This allowed the discount rate of business transactions to drop significantly for "high ticket average" businesses, such as hotels and casinos. By paying pennies per transaction to Shift4, companies started to see transaction fee savings in the thousands.
In a bid to expand their business, Shift4 released $$$ In The Bank® for Windows in 1998. This allowed companies to have more then one application running on an IBM compatible PC. Now companies could have their Point of Sale software fully integrated with their credit card authorization software.
As an ancillary product to $$$ In The Bank® for Windows, Shift4 introduced VirtualLeasedLine™ which allowed card-present, brick and mortar businesses to process card-present credit card transactions over the Internet, without the need for telephone lines. Up to that point organization has to rely on telephone lines or an expensive leased line to process card-present credit card transactions.
As such, Shift4 was the first organization to process card-present transactions over the Internet in the later half of 1999, and to date is the largest volume [payment gateway] of card-present credit card transactions. What made this approach unique was that prior to the creation of this technology, the only use of the Internet for processing credit cards was from website based shopping cart software.
In 1999 Shift4 introduced $$$ On the Net® which was delivered in the ASP Model. Companies with an Internet connection could connect to Shift4 via a unique VPN technology and get fast authorizations without expensive connectivity, mis or development costs, or major system upgrades. This has since turned into their flagship core product and both versions of $$$ In The Bank® are no longer sold. As of September 2003 $$$ In The Bank® for DOS was fully phased out of support.
[edit] Origin of Company Name
From their webpage, "To solve the Shift4 riddle, hold down your "SHIFT" key while pressing the "4" key. What do you see? A dollar sign. And that's our core function: turning customers' credit and debit transactions into dollars in the bank, quickly, accurately and securely."[1]
[edit] Products and Technology
[edit] Accounting
$$$ ON THE NET® is a comprehensive credit card accounting application. This application allows merchants to audit sales data prior to settlement. It provides ability for their clients to reduce cost of transactions to banks/processors before they become financial liabilities and/or customer service issues.
[edit] Fraud prevention
$$$ ON THE NET® offers FRAUD SENTRY® a system witch allow their clients to monitor and prevent employee fraud.
Shift4's Tokenization technology invented by Shift4 in 2005 removes credit card data from Point-of-Sale (POS) systems to counter the threat of compromise of account number and magnetic swipe data stored in those systems.
[edit] Transaction Processing Technology
Speed: Because their core product, $$$ ON THE NET, is an ASP application, they are able to authorize transactions under 3 seconds with no dedicated hardware or uniform infrastructure.
Reliability: Company has setup redundant data centers and redundant servers to provide high uptime averages (99%). Shift4's Assured Delivery Technology ensures transactions are only authorized once for no duplicate or lost transactions.
Security: Shift4’s expertise in credit card security spans over twelve years, including certified compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). [1]
