[14] Gartner Analyst Avivah Litan stated that Heartland "is basically leading the way for the rest of the industry."

[16][17] Following a keynote address to the Strategic Leadership Forum of the Electronic Transactions Association in October 2013, Heartland CEO Bob Carr published an open letter to the electronic payment processing industry urging an end to unethical, dishonest and illegal pricing practices, referencing the practice of deliberately falsifying interchange rates, deliberately falsifying merchant category codes (MCC), and the use of confusing small print to extort large fines from merchants.

[19] The lawsuit concerns interchange fees charged by credit card networks and alleges violations of the Lanham Act and state laws.

[citation needed] In April 2016, Heartland and Global Payments completed their merger agreement.

The combined company, Global Payments Inc., is publicly traded (NYSE: GPN), and has more than 8,500 employees worldwide.