The Post-IPO First Data Continues To Navigate a Shifting Payments Landscape

First Data Corp.’s push to transform itself into a nimbler and more responsive payments processor continues on, with changes in its internal structure and approach to servicing merchants leading the way, says a First Data executive.

In an interview Thursday with Digital Transactions News, Dan Charron, First Data executive vice president and head of Global Business Solutions, says this is manifested in many ways. Atlanta-based First Data again became a publicly traded company Thursday after having been taken private in 2007 by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Its re-entry in the stock market netted approximately $2.5 billion to help pay down some of its $20.7 billion in debt. “We still have debt,” Charron says, “but it’s on a much more manageable level.”

For example, Charron pointed to First Data’s string of acquisitions, such as its 2013 acquisition of tablet point-of-sale system Clover and its 2015 purchase of Transaction Wireless, a digital gift card company, as indicators of this change.

While First Data’s status as a payments behemoth is without question—it counts more than 6 million merchant locations as its customers and processed $1.7 trillion in payments in 2014—these acquisitions have helped the company become more adept at servicing merchants, Charron says.

Clover, which offers a stationary POS and multiple mobile versions, provides client merchants with access to an app marketplace where they can obtain apps to help run their businesses. He points to apps like UberRush, a delivery service that relies on Uber’s ride-sharing service.

Merchants can load the UberRush Clover app on to their devices and have a delivery service without recruiting drivers or paying for delivery vehicles, while integrating the delivery data into their reporting. “We provide the place and environment in which innovations can occur,” Charron says.

Its Transactions Wireless acquisition instantly gave First Data an entry in digital gift cards, a growing segment among consumer gift card purchases.

Internally, First Data is shuffling personnel to create new teams with the objective of spurring new ideas about payments and commerce, he says. As an example, First Data is rethinking what it does with all of the data it collects about payments.

“We realized we had an information company inside of First Data,” Charron says, “but never took advantage of it to get that information to our customers to help them run their businesses.”