Revolutionizing the payment industry is no easy task. The goal is more attainable, however, with a hefty round of financing. Cambridge-based Leaf has raised $20 million from Heartland Payment Systems, according to source close to BostInno. Leaf and Heartland are expected to announce the news Tuesday morning.
Heartland (NYSE: HPY) was an early distributor of Leaf, a mobile Point of Sale (POS) platform that broke into the market in April of 2012 with $1 million in seed funding. By June of 2012, Leaf Founder and CEO Aron Schwarzkopf told BostInno they had raised a $2 million bridge round. This newest round of funding will allegedly be used to grow the Leaf team and accelerate the app’s ecosystem.
Leaf provides local merchants with a computing tablet designed to modify their POS system. When a customer swipes their credit card, Leaf sends them a paperless receipt, prompting them to rate their experience with the merchant. In turn, the merchant receives easily digestible data they can use to learn more about the transactions occurring in their store, thereby improving the overall customer experience.
As an added bonus, Leaf—touted as creators of the "world’s first tablet designed for commerce"—recently unveiled an open approach to payment acceptance, giving small businesses the flexibility to work with a payment provider of their choice, including Heartland.
At the time of the update, Alberto Cabre, chef of Somerville’s CasaB, noted they have worked with Heartland for a while and “love their service,” so they “were excited to be able to use Leaf with [their] existing Heartland account.”
Although receiving $20 million from Heartland, Leaf will reportedly remain independent and have no exclusivity in terms of distribution within the payment processing and POS industry. Considering an inside source also told BostInno Schwarzkopf could have sold Leaf for $40 million last year, that guaranteed independence could have been crucial in the negotiation process.
“We don’t want people to walk around Boston without being able to see our brand and interact with our system,” said Leaf COO and Founder Castro Galnares in a prior interview. “We want to show the world that Boston is capable of embracing this new technology.”
Earlier this year, Leaf partnered with the Harvard Square Business Association to help patrons donate money to seven different local charities with the swipe of a credit card. Monetary donations from $1 to $100 could be made by shoppers when they were checking out at the Leaf kiosks of 15 participating businesses.
BostInno reached out and Schwarzkopf was unable to comment.
