Talk:Shift4

Excerpts of Analyst Reports

I have a WP: COI as an employee of Shift4 Payments. I’d like to provide excerpts of citations, mostly independent analyst reports from major banks’ research divisions, that are behind paywalls.

1. In paragraph one of the section “Intro”, for the sentence beginning “Shift4Payments is a payment processing company publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange and based in Allentown, Pennsylvania.”, the cited report from Morgan Stanley reads, in part:

Shift4 has laid the groundwork to be a meaningful merchant acquirer in the market:Shift4 is a conglomerate of a number of key gateway providers, POS providers, and payment processing ISOs that have specialized in the hospitality vertical for 20-35 years (please see About Shift4 Payments (FOUR) for a detailed corporate history). Nearly 90% of the volumes that go through its platform run through its gateway-only offering. Shift4 sees an opportunity to up-sell its large gateway merchant base, comprising of 55K merchants and over $200B in normalized volumes, to its higher revenue and greater gross profit end-to-end business.

2. In paragraph one of the section “Services”, for the sentence beginning “Shift4 Payments provides point-of-sale software solutions to merchants, connecting credit card and digital payments into the merchant’s accounting software.”, the cited report from Morgan Stanley reads, in part:

Shift4 is a conglomerate of a number of key gateway providers, POS providers, and payment processing ISOs that have specialized in the hospitality vertical for 20-35 years(please see About Shift4 Payments (FOUR) for a detailed corporate history). Nearly 90% of the volumes that go through its platform run through its gateway-only offering.

3. In paragraph one of the section “Services”, for the sentence beginning “Shift4 works primarily in the restaurant, hospitality, retail and e-commerce industries”, the cited report from Morgan Stanley reads, in part:

Shift4 operates primarily in the hospitality vertical, including hotels and restaurants. It plans to continue expanding into adjacent verticals like retail, spa, parking lots and eCommerce.

4. In paragraph one of the section “Intro”, for the sentence beginning “The company, founded in 1999 by the then 16-year old Jared Issacman”, the cited report from Credit Suisse reads, in part:

Shift4 Payments as it exists today, is a rebranded name of a company initially formed in 1999 as United Bank Card Inc. Jared Isaacman, at the age of 16, founded the company in his parents’ basement in New Jersey, alongside his father, Donald Isaacman (current President) and his friend Brendan Lauber (current CTO). 

5. In paragraph one of the section “Intro”, for the sentence beginning “Shift4 specializes in commerce solutions such as mobile payment software and hardware.”, the cited report from Credit Suisse reads, in part:

In addition to the 350+ ISV partners and ~7,000 VARs, Shift4 has a number of owned solutions as well. There are three major types of solutions they provide: 1) POS software (four restaurant-focused platforms, and a mobile POS solution); 2) Business Intelligence software (Lighthouse); and 3) a developer marketplace (for third-party applications). 

6. In paragraph one of the section “History”, for the sentence beginning “As an alternative, Isaacman’s new company cut the set-up time to one day, gave merchants free credit card readers and only required merchants sign a two-page document.”, the cited report from Credit Suisse reads, in part:

In 2004, the company launched its free terminal program, at the time a differentiated offering that provided for free hardware to merchants who signed up for payments processing. 

7. In paragraph two of the section “History”, for the sentence beginning “ The company rebranded once again in 2017 as Lighthouse Network, with Harbortouch becoming a subsidiary.”, the cited report from Credit Suisse reads, in part:

In 2017 the company was rebranded again as Lighthouse Network, with Harbortouch as an operating subsidiary. Also in 2017, the company was active in capital markets, doing multiple acquisitions, most notably adding to its suite of owned software platforms in the restaurant and hospitality space by acquiring Restaurant Manager, POSitouch, and Future POS. 

8. In paragraph three of the section “History”, for the sentence beginning “In 2017, the company - then operating as the Lighthouse Network - acquired payment gateway provider Shift4 Corp and rebranded itself as Shift4Payments.”, the cited report from Credit Suisse reads, in part:

Towards the end of 2017, the company acquired independent gateway provider and inventor of payment data tokenization Shift4 Corporation, then in early 2018 Lighthouse Network was rebranded for a fourth time as Shift4 Payments. Merchant Link, another gateway provider, 

9. In paragraph one of the section “Intro, for the sentence beginning “When the company went public in 2020, Isaacman was still the CEO.”, the cited report from Citibank reads, in part:

The current CEO Jared Isaacman founded the predecessor company in 1999.

10. In paragraph two of the section “History, for the sentence beginning “In 2012, United Bank Card rebranded as Harbortouch following the success of its point-of-service and payment technology utilized by small restaurants.”, the cited report from Citibank reads, in part:

2008 - Harbortouch POS established Integrated POS & payment technology at disruptive price point to small restaurants; 2012 - Company rebrand: Harbortouch Following the success of the POS, United Bank Card rebranded as Harbortouch

11. In paragraph three of the section “History”, for the sentence beginning “Between 2014 and 2017, the company expanded by acquiring multiple payment processing and point-of-service companies, including Merchant Services Inc (the same company Issacman worked for as a teen), Restaurant Manager, POSitouch, Future POS and CurvePay”, the cited report from Citibank reads, in part:

2014 - Acquisition of Merchant Services Inc. (MSI) Merchant Services is a a payment processing ISO based in NJ; 2017 - Acquisition of multiple POS companies Restaurant Manager, POSitouch, and Future POS; 2017 - Acquisition of CurvePay CurvePay is a payments ISO primarily focused on taxis across the U.S.; 2017 - Acquisition of Shift4 Corporation (added over $60 bil of annual processing volume). Shift4 Corporation is an independent North American payment gateway and provides payment tokenization. The acquisition adds 300+ unique software integrations that supports ISVs and merchants

12. In paragraph four of the section “History”, for the sentence beginning “Shift4Payments went public on the NYSE in June 2020, raising $345 million through its IPO.”, the cited report from Citibank reads, in part:

Gross proceeds from the IPO were $345 million (15 million shares of Class A common stock at $23).

13. In paragraph one of the section “Services”, for the sentence beginning “ In 2019, the company processed approximately 3.5 billion transactions.”, the cited report from Goldman Sachs reads, in part:

Through organic growth and M&A, Shift4 has combined integrated payments and gateway solutions into a single payments platform, which in 2019 processed over 3.5bn transactions representing over $200bn in payment volume. 

Please let me know if you need any additional excerpts. Paul.jonah.paul (talk) 19:14, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Request for Comments re: Draft: Shift4 Payments

The article for Draft: Shift4 Payments was previously rejected after three submissions at AfC, the last one 16 months ago. The company has since gone public on the NYSE and is receiving substantial new press and independent analysis. Should the subject, with new sourcing, be approved as a Wikipedia article even though an older version of the draft was previously rejected when the company was private? Paul.jonah.paul (talk) 22:54, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Survey

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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• ’’’Allow’’’ I have opened this discussion on the Talk page of the draft on the specific advice of User: Eternal Shadow, who answered this same question on the Help desk as “possibly” but noted that rejected articles are harder to overturn than regular declines. He suggested a multi-editor discussion. I have a COI here as an employee of the company. I didn’t know enough about Wikipedia notability policy when I originally submitted the AfC draft when the company was still private. I hope my early mistakes as a new editor won’t interfere with the encyclopedia having an article that now qualifies. I’ve since learned that WP: Listed says about NYSE-listed companies: “sufficient independent sources almost always exist for such companies, so that notability can be established using the primary criterion discussed above. Examples of such sources include independent press coverage and analyst reports.” In this case, high-quality, independent analyst reports I have newly cited include: Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Citi, S&P Global, and RBC Capital. Since these analyst reports are behind expensive paywalls, I have included relevant excerpts above at Draft talk:Shift4 Payments#Excerpts of Analyst Reports In addition, mainstream editorial coverage from Reuters [1], Barrons [2], Bloomberg [3], Yahoo Finance [4], Market Watch [5], Fast Company [6] and Business Insider [7] has been added to the article. Ongoing mainstream news coverage and analyst reports are guaranteed so long as the company is public. Paul.jonah.paul (talk)
• Summoned by FRS bot - I reviewed the article and made some minor edits to clean it up. Shift4 seems to be just notable enough, based on the recent coverage, but I recommend removing the analyst reports. Those aren't typically used as sources, because their reliability is questionable. The report writers may have positions in the companies they write about, or they may not properly vet the companies. In any case, the links in the citations just go to the main analyst pages - there's no evidence from your citations that the reports actually even exist. Absent the reports, I think there's just enough to get approved, but I can't predict whether the reviewer will be able to get past the WP:COI. It would help to make a disclosure on the top if this page. See Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#General COI Good luck! TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 00:04, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Paul.jonah.paul - contacting editor

Hi. I have included analyst reports because WP: LISTED specifically says that the existence of analysts reports helps establish notability. The only ones I listed are for major investment banks. Investment banks are required to keep a Chinese Wall between their analyst coverage, made for the benefit of the company's clients who trade stocks with them, and their activities trading in their own accounts. To fail to do so, especially without disclosure, is a serious federal crime - insider trading. As I know the links only go to the website of the investment banks and not the actual analyst reports, I have provided extensive excerpts for anything cited right above here: Draft talk:Shift4 Payments#Excerpts of Analyst Reports. Published work doesn't need to be on the public internet to be used as a Wikipedia source, of course. WP: Sources. I hope that helps clear up why I included these reports and their reliability. I didn't even include the publicly available analyst reports from sources like Seeking Alpha [8], Motley Fool[9], [Invest Chronicle [10], Investor's Observer [11], etc. If WP: Listed is referring to publicly available analyst reports also, as you see, there are many of these, too. Thanks. Paul.jonah.paul (talk) 20:01, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

@Paul.jonah.paul: You give the SEC too much credit. Nonetheless, despite the claimed Chinese Wall, the only time I've seen a paid analyst research report help with notability is when a company is selected as a leader, challenger or visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, because the achievement is usually also reported as being newsworthy outside of the report. So I think the article is better off without the reports. If there's enough independent third party media coverage to build a good starter article, without having to depend on paid analyst reports, that demonstrates notability. And I think there is. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:13, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

• Comment/Question I looked through the article and the discussion, and I do think it meets notability criteria, though the "History" section, especially for an article this short, reads a bit like an advertisement. Particularly given the COI, my vote would be that it needs some cleaning up in that section, but seems suitable to publish after that. So here's where I have a question - I'm not terribly familiar with the AfC process and was asked here by a bot. While I'm happy to give my opinion here, what's the scope of this RfC? Does this have some official bearing on the AfC, or is this just an extra step to try to drive towards a consensus that will make the article more likely to be approved? Arathald (talk) 07:33, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
• Shift4 Payments might meet WP:NCORP but this draft is appalling. Here's what we have for sources:

1. SEC report is a primary public record.
2. SEC report is a primary public record.
3. Goldman Sachs isn't an independent, reliable source, plus it doesn't mention the subject.
4. Barron's is a reliable source covering the IPO.
5. Morgan Stanley isn't an independent, reliable source, plus it doesn't mention the subject.
6. Credit Suisse isn't an independent, reliable source, plus it doesn't mention the subject.
7. MarketWatch is a reliable source covering the IPO.
8. Yahoo! Finance is a primary database listing.
9. Citi Research isn't an independent, reliable source, plus it doesn't mention the subject.
10. Business Insider is a questionable source covering the IPO.
11. Fast Company doesn't mention the subject.
12. Reuters is a reliable source covering the IPO.
13. The Morning Call is a local paper of questionable reliability covering the Lighthouse acquisition of Shift4.
14. S&P Global isn't an independent, reliable source.
15. Bloomberg is a reliable source covering the IPO.
16. PYMNTS is at best a summary of a primary press release.
17. The Morning Call is the same local paper covering the IPO.

That gives us 4 reliable sources covering the IPO and 2 articles from a questionable source about the IPO and an acquisition. At most, that justifies a stub with a few sentences, not this puff piece. The draft also ignores controversies like an antitrust challenge reported by Bloomberg Law. That's actually positive coverage, since the challenge was defeated, but should probably be mentioned. So should we have an article on Shift4 Payments? Probably. Is this that article? Nope, and Paul.jonah.paul should really let an editor without a confict of interest handle it. Woodroar (talk) 17:24, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

@Woodroar: the Fast Company article is about Harbortouch, which was one of Shift4's previous names. There's just enough there for NCORP if the primary source reports are taken out, as I suggested earlier. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:17, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

@Timtempleton: and others. I have redrafted the article to delete the private bank analyst reports,as that seemed to be the consensus. With this done, the consensus seems to be that the draft can be published on mainspace. Are you able to do this? Or anyone else? As I disclosed above, I have a COI and thus, can’t do thus myself. Many thanks. 18:31, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Request Admin Help

At the direction of User: Eternal Shadow, in a discussion on the Help page for AfC, I started an RfC on this Talk page about whether to approve the Draft: Shift4 Payments for the main space, since it had been rejected thrice before but has since gone public on the NYSE. I have a disclosed COI, which is why I put this draft through AfC. I think the unanimous consensus is that the company is now notable because it went public and has much more press. I also made extensive revisions to the draft as instructed by editors in the RfC. The discussion is right above here -- it’s called “Request for Comments re: Draft: Shift4 Payments.”

Could an admin confirm the consensus and if you agree, please bring the article to the main space? It isn’t a contentious discussion, but I haven’t been able to get anyone to act on this since September 1, when the last RfC comment appeared. None of the participants in the discussion have responded to requests to conclude the RfC. And I can’t get the attention of the AfC Help desk. Thank you very much. Paul.jonah.paul (talk) 18:41, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

This doesn't need an admin. If you submit your draft for review, it will be judged by a reviewer. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 06:59, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Request Edits November 11, 2021

I work for Shift4, the subject of this article. Following instructions on the Contact Us page, [12], I’d request that independent editors please review these suggested changes, which I believe improve the article consistent with Wikipedia Policy. I won’t edit the article myself because of the conflict of interest.

1. Please replace the logo in the info box with the “Shift4” logo found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shift4_Logo_2021.png

Why? The company now has a new logo, as seen on their website [13] and in their latest press release [14]

2. Please replace all mentions of “Shift4 Payments” with “Shift4”

Why? As part of the same rebranding, the company is now known only as “Shift4”

Thank you for your consideration.

Paul.jonah.paul (talk) 22:52, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

@Paul.jonah.paul: that's  Done. JBchrch talk 19:34, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Request Edit March 2022

I work for Shift4, the subject of this article. Following instructions on the Contact Us page, [15], I’d request that independent editors please review these suggested changes, which I believe improve the article consistent with Wikipedia Policy. I won’t edit the article myself because of the conflict of interest.

1. Please update the Number of Employees in the infobox. The source that is currently cited [16] has been updated to reflect the number as "1,753." If an additional source is required, please refer to this recent article [17], in which a Shift4 spokesperson says that the number of employees is "about 1,700."

Why? This reflects the accurate size of the company.

2. Please change the Company Name in the infobox from “Shift4 Payments, Inc.” to Shift4, Inc.”

Why? This is consistent with the rest of the article, which uses the accurate name of the company.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration. Paul.jonah.paul (talk) 00:25, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done Mkcaldwell (talk) 06:02, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Request Edits March 2022

I work for Shift4, the owner of the subject of this article. Following instructions on the Contact Us page, Wikipedia:Contact_us/Article_subjects, I’d request that independent editors please review these suggested changes, which I believe improve the article consistent with Wikipedia Policy. I won’t edit the article myself because of the conflict of interest.

1. Add mention of acquisition of The Giving Block: References can be found here: [18] [19]

Why? These updates allow the article to accurately reflect the current organization and size of the company.

2. Add mention of acquisition of Finaro: References can be found here: [20] [21]

Why? These updates allow the article to accurately reflect the current organization and size of the company.

3. If possible and considered noteworthy, please add some content and references to the section that mentions VenueNext for stadiums and arenas. These could include T-Mobile Arena [22] [23], United Center [24] [25], Audi Field [26], and United Soccer League [27]

Why? These updates expand on the VenueNext acquisition, which is already referenced in the article.

Thank you very much for your consideration. Paul.jonah.paul (talk) 23:36, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

 Partly done: 1 isn't really notable, as far as I could tell from a quick search. 2 is implemented. I would need some specific requests re drafting for 3, as I don't currently have the time for researching and drafting what you suggested. Feel free to write something up yourself and resubmit a request. PK650 (talk) 09:07, 10 April 2022 (UTC)