John Marshall Leaves Hypercom, Joins Blackstone

B lackstone Communications, one of the nation's leading electronic providers of prepaid telecommunications products and services, has named John Marshall to its newly created position of President of Blackstone's Prepaid Systems Group, a wholly owned subsidiary.

Marshall, who has more than 25 years of experience in the electronic payment industry, most recently was Senior Vice President, Office of the President, for Hypercom Corp. In his new position, Marshall will be responsible for the overall direction, coordination and evaluation of the Prepaid Systems Group, including the day-to-day operations, sales and marketing and long-term strategic planning.

"The opportunity that Blackstone has to quickly bring two large but separate industries together (prepaid calling cards and credit cards) and better serve the merchant is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Marshall said. "I am very happy to be a part of the Blackstone team."

Blackstone rapidly has become one of the country's largest providers of prepaid telecommunications products and services with more than 300,000 retail locations nationwide. Established and headquartered in Miami since 1995, Blackstone is privately owned and managed by a team of executives experienced in payment processing, networking, information services, oil and gas, and prepaid telecommunications.

Blackstone has developed ongoing distribution relationships with such internationally recognized companies as AT&T, VoiceStream, Americatel, Cingular, Embratel, Hypercom, Qwest and Universal Savings Bank.

With the formation of the Prepaid Systems Group, Blackstone is successfully merging two industries, prepaid telecommunications and electronic transactions, into one terminal to the benefit of merchants across the United States.

The Blackstone POS terminal, utilizing the Hypercom ICE 5500, is revolutionizing the electronic transaction industry by integrating the processing of all major credit cards (MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover Card and Diners Club), ATM/bank cards and EBT (electronic benefits transfer) with the sale of prepaid cellular and prepaid calling cards into one, easy-to-use POS terminal.

Blackstone will provide Special Services Inc. with its proprietary software for the sale of prepaid products and services, including prepaid cellular and calling cards, before the end of the year. Pilot programs are expected to be completed by November 2001.

"The argument for re-equipping the independent and the convenience-store locations with an easy-to-use payment device that is 100 percent paid for by the sales of prepaid products (calling cards, cellular and home phone service) is absolutely essential in today's competitive marketplace," Marshall said.

Gene Pounds, Senior Vice President of Sales for Special Service Systems, concurred, saying, "It's high time that the credit card terminal become a revenue-producing device rather than the money drain it has traditionally been. Now, by combining these two powerful applications, convenience-store operators can now actually make money with their credit card terminals."

Luis Arias, Blackstone's President and Chief Executive Officer, added, "For the last several months, I have been trying to entice John to join Blackstone. I am thrilled to have him on board and look forward to announcing our major successes in the coming weeks."

In the 14 years that Marshall was at Hypercom, demand for Hypercom's terminals surpassed one million units. Hypercom today maintains an installed base of more than 4 million terminals in more than 100 countries that conduct more than 10 billion transactions annually. Hypercom is the number one supplier of point-of-sale equipment worldwide and has the largest installed base in Latin America and the Asia/Pacific region.

Before working at Hypercom, Marshall was Vice President, Sales and Marketing, for six years at Austnet and EFTel, which specialize in EFT switching and POS terminals in Australia. Marshall also was the VP/Sales and Marketing for five years at Data Terminal Systems/National Semiconductor, Australia, which focused on hotel/restaurant inventory control, POS systems, front-end scanning and in-store supermarkets, and was the VP/Sales and Marketing, Senior Sales for IBM, EDP and Eagle Technologies, Canada and New Zealand (manager, service bureau operations).