Heartland Vice-Chairman Bob Baldwin Talks Payments’ Big Picture

Bob Baldwin joined Heartland Payment Systems in 2000, leaving COMFORCE Corp. to become the chief financial officer at what was a young payment processor at the time. Over the next few years, Heartland would grow substantially, raising $40 million in private equity in 2001, then going public in 2005.

Fast forward to 2012: Baldwin is now vice-chairman at Heartland, the nation’s fifth-largest processor and a company worth more than $1 billion. With his recent promotion, we thought it the perfect time to get a dose of payments perspective. In our interview with Baldwin, we talk about the biggest changes in payments over the past decade (Baldwin can name five), the challenges and needs being faced by merchants today, and what the industry can expect to see happen over the next several years (EMV? NFC? mobile?).