ypercom Corp. founder George Wallner has left Hypercom - he resigned from the Board of Directors and no longer will serve as a consultant to the company. Wallner also sold 7 million shares of his personal Hypercom stock.

Wallner founded Hypercom 25 years ago in Australia and relocated the company's headquarters to the U.S. in 1989. It has since become one of the leading point-of-sale terminal providers in the U.S.

In July 2003, Wallner stepped down from his position of Hypercom's Chairman of the Board to serve as Chief Strategist. In this role, he was responsible for the technology direction of the company, overseeing the Secure Systems and Transactions Group (SST) - a division focused on integrating Hypercom's newest technologies, including biometrics, secure ID, age verification and transaction security products and systems.

Scott Tsujita, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer for Hypercom, said that Wallner left because he wanted to pursue other ventures and that his departure was a mutual decision between Wallner and the company.

In May, Hypercom recognized Wallner for his contributions to the industry by presenting him with the 2003 Payment Industry Luminary award. Wallner and brother Paul (also a co-founder of Hypercom) each sold 7 million shares of their personal holdings of Hypercom stock to institutional investors on August 14 and 15, 2003, respectively. (Hypercom will register these shares for resale.)

The brothers had been the primary shareholders of the company, holding about 35-40% of outstanding shares. The two also had sold a large amount of stock in July.

Following the sales, George Wallner has 3.845 million shares still invested in the company, and Paul Wallner has 400,000.

As part of the terms of his departure, George Wallner also signed a "non-competitive agreement" that prevents him from using proceeds from the sale of his stock to create a competing company or competing technologies during the next year.