VeriFone Has Staying Power: CEO
VeriFone is changing so it can take advantage of the new world of mobile payments, the electronic payment company’s CEO, Douglas Bergeron, said in a CNBC interviewon Thursday.
After Starbucks and announced a mobile payment deal, where Starbucks will start accepting payments from Square’s mobile payment app this fall, the pressure may be on VeriFone to respond. VeriFone shares have fallen 12 percent since the announcement. (See Also: Winners & Losers in the Digital Wallet Race).
“It’s probably going to stimulate a number of our existing customers to work with us to do even more innovative things including with their existing infrastructure and offering mobility in other ways to speed up checkout times,” the VeriFone CEO said of the deal between Starbucks and Square.
Bergeron added, “Companies like VeriFone that have incumbency and are willing to change will do very well.” He pointed out that the company already has a number of mobility products that allow phones to be used as ways to pay and ways to accept payment.
Already, Bergeron said its retail customers, accounting for 70 percent of the retail market, are looking to VeriFone to augment what they’re doing at check out. VeriFone also just signed a deal with New York City to allow people to pay bus fare with their phones.
Although investors have knocked down the shares, Bergeron said people should take a longer view. “VeriFone is a very innovative business,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of staying power. We generate a lot of cash.”
"We’re morphing ourselves into the new world of mobile payments and we’re in a great position to do that given our legacy and our future," he added.
When asked if an acquisition of Square was next, Bergeron responded, “Absolutely not.”
