Ingenico Buys The Rest Of ROAM

French point-of-sale vendor Ingenico now owns 100 percent of mobile commerce platform ROAM, the company announced on Tuesday (Jan. 20).

Going forward, the names of ROAM’s existing individual products — which include secure mobile card readers, mobile point-of-sale applications, a mobile payments engine and professional services — will remain the same. But the ROAM brand will be absorbed by Ingenico Mobile Solutions, which will continue to be headquartered in Boston.

Ingenico already owned a controlling interest in ROAM, and some executives worked for both companies.

“ROAM is a key part of the Ingenico Group worldwide portfolio as mobile commerce growth surges,” said Jacques Guerin, Ingenico’s EVP for Smart terminals and Mobile solutions. “With 100 percent of ROAM, we will accelerate the deployment of a global and integrated mobile offer, enabling merchants to increasingly engage with their customers.”

David Szczepanski, an 11-year Ingenico veteran, will serve as the chief operating officer for Ingenico Mobile Solutions, with marching orders to manage the deployment of a global and integrated mobile-payments offering.

Ingenico has also hired Chris Dismukes as the mobile group’s new SVP of U.S. Sales. Dismukes, who will lead the merged mobile sales team, spent nine years at Equinox Payments, the second-largest PIN-pad maker in the U.S., and at Hypercom U.S. before it was reorganized into Equinox in 2011.

The goal of absorbing ROAM is to capture a bigger share of the North American market, according to Thierry Denis, president of Ingenico Group North America. That will depend on Ingenico successfully riding the shift to mobile point of sale, including Apple Pay and other NFC-based mobile payments approaches.

Globally, Ingenico is the top point-of-sale maker with a 30 percent market share with shipments rising 18 percent annually, while runner-up VeriFone has 18.6 percent share worldwide with shipments falling by double digits. But in the U.S., Verifone rules with a 51.5 percent share of terminal shipments compared with No. 3 Ingenico’s 17.4 percent, according to Nilson Report.