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Our Story
Know More About Our History, About Us And About Our Future
Established and headquartered in Miami, Florida since 1994,
Blackstone is privately owned and managed by a team of executives
experienced in payments processing, networking, information
services, retail marketing and telecommunications. Under their
direction, Blackstone has established ongoing relationships
with internationally recognized companies such as AT&T
Wireless, BellSouth, Cingular, Cisco Systems, Fifth Third
Bancorp, Hypercom, IDT, and T-Mobile.
As the prepaid telecommunications industry exploded in
the mid 90s, Blackstone Calling Card rapidly became one
of the country’s largest distributers of prepaid telecommunications
products and services with thousands of retail locations and
agents & distributors nationwide. Over the years, our agents,
distributors, merchants and consumers have relied on Blackstone
to provide dependable products at competitive prices.
During the Spring of 1999, Blackstone Calling Card realized
that point-of-sale (POS) was the key to long-term success
in the prepaid arena, especially for the success of prepaid
cellular. So development began on what was to be a tool to
enable merchants to offer an entire suite of prepaid products
without purchasing or storing any inventory.
Today, Blackstone has created the most innovative point-of-sale
system which successfully integrates the processing of
all major credit cards (MasterCard, Visa, American Express
and Discover Card) and ATM/debit/EBT cards with the sale of
prepaid products, including prepaid cellular and prepaid calling
cards, into one, easy-to-use POS terminal, the licensed
Blackstone POS terminal.
In addition to offering the electronic delivery of prepaid
products, as a merchant acquirer, Blackstone also provides
an array of services to its merchant base. Blackstone Merchant
Services (BMS) is a registered member of the Visa and MasterCard
organizations as well as registered agents of American
Express, Discover Card, CrossCheck and Global Payment Systems.
Building on the success of the POS terminal, in the Fall of
2002, Blackstone began developing an interactive kiosk –
the Blackstone Prepaid Stop and during the Spring of 2003
– the Blackstone Touch-N-Buy. Unlike traditional
vending units, the Blackstone Portal and Touch-N-Buy do not display
or store live inventory, they enable retailers to offer the
an entire category of prepaid products and services via an
interactive kiosk without worrying about staffing, inventory,
shelf space, employee training or theft.
On November 25, 2003, Blackstone’s CEO, Luis Arias
was awarded a patent by the US Patent & Trademark Office
(No.: US 6,651,885) for the Real Time Electronic PIN Delivery
System, more commonly referred to as the Blackstone or Arias
Patent. |
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