In 1995, Blackstone opened its doors as a distributor of prepaid products and services to gas stations and convenience stores in the South Florida market. The prepaid product market began to boom and Blackstone’s founder and CEO, Mr. Luis Arias, knew that it would be necessary to use state-of-the-art technology to deliver the many products that were surfacing in the prepaid industry. He immediately began the development of the first point of sale terminal that would deliver prepaid products to retail stores. This new patented technology opened our doors to the electronic delivery of prepaid as well as to a whole new industry- Merchant Services.
Since 2000, Blackstone has led the evolution of prepaid delivery with many firsts; such as, the first company to release a terminal to sell prepaid and credit card processing in one and the first interactive kiosk for the delivery of prepaid.
Today, with over 150 employees and a network of 15,000 plus merchants nationwide, Blackstone continues to follow a “family-owned” philosophy which values our client’s satisfaction above all. We are also deeply entrepreneur at heart, bringing the latest technology to our growing base of clients.
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.