Heartland Payment Systems Acquires School-Link Technologies—becomes the Leading K-12 School Nutrition and Point-of-Sale Provider

Heartland School Solutions^SM to deliver best-in-class services to K-12 schools

PRINCETON, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Heartland School Solutions, a division of Heartland Payment Systems^® (NYSE: HPY), one of the nation’s largest payments processors, has acquired School-Link Technologies, Inc., a privately held provider of comprehensive K-12 school nutrition and point-of-sale (POS) solutions. Over the past 10 months, Heartland also acquired three other providers in the K-12 space to establish a market-leading position in the K-12 school nutrition and POS technology industry. These acquisitions included LunchBox, an integrated school nutrition and POS management application; Comalex Inc., software for school nutrition programs and POS systems; and MySchoolBucks.com, a website and online service for parents to pay for their child’s school meals and student activity fees using a credit or debit card or via electronic check. Heartland now serves more than 19,000 K-12 public schools across the United States, representing almost 20 percent market share.

“Heartland’s strategic acquisition of these premier K-12 service providers positions us as the market leader and will have a meaningful impact on our future growth,” said Bob Carr, Heartland’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Heartland School Solutions provides a single, powerful suite of payment processing solutions to help take K-12 school nutrition programs to the next level of ease of use and innovation.”

Heartland’s full suite of front- and back-of-the-house K-12 school nutrition and POS technology solutions includes:

• Online Portal Capability – Online payment system solutions that offer major benefits for both parents and the school, enabling parents to pay for school meals, view their child's lunchroom purchases and get nutritional information in one central place. Parents can set up automatic email reminders and make payments for their children even if they attend different schools. The functionality can also be easily expanded to enable parents and students to pay for things at school beyond the lunchroom, such as athletic tickets, yearbooks, t-shirts and school store items.
• Point-of-Sale Solutions – A full-service POS system that automates and streamlines school nutrition operations to help schools better track purchases, manage Free and Reduced Meal Applications and back-of-the-house reporting.
• Back Office Solutions – A comprehensive school nutrition system to streamline ordering, inventory management and menu planning.
• SeeMyPlate^TM – A Heartland service that allows parents to see their children’s school plates. This allows parents to monitor their children’s meals, help educate students and parents about nutrition and empower them to make healthy decisions.

Michael Lawler, executive director of Heartland School Solutions, added, “Many school districts across the country are experiencing tight budgets that don’t leave much room for large investments. Heartland’s robust K-12 solutions will enable our customers to increase operational efficiencies, lower expenses and generate additional revenue in the school nutrition program, and in other school activities where payments take place.”

Preston Todd Advisors, a leading buy-side M & A advisory firm specializing in the payments and payments technologies sectors, served as advisor to Heartland in the School-Link and LunchBox transactions.

For more information about Heartland School Solutions, visit HeartlandPaymentSystems.com/School, call [phone] or email [e-mail].

About Heartland Payment Systems

Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. (NYSE: HPY), the fifth largest payments processor in the United States, delivers credit/debit/prepaid card processing, gift marketing and loyalty programs, payroll, check management and related business solutions to more than 250,000 business locations nationwide. A FORTUNE 1000 company, Heartland is the founding supporter of The Merchant Bill of Rights, a public advocacy initiative that educates merchants about fair credit and debit card processing practices. The company is also a leader in the development of end-to-end encryption technology designed to protect cardholder data, rendering it useless to cybercriminals. For more information, please visit HeartlandPaymentSystems.com, MerchantBillOfRights.org, CostOfABurger.com and E3secure.com.

Forward-looking Statements

This press release contains statements of a forward-looking nature which represent our management’s beliefs and assumptions concerning future events. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions and are based on information currently available to us. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements due to many factors, including risks and additional factors that are described in the Company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including but not limited to the Company’s annual report on Form 10- K for the year ended December 31, 2010. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release.