UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM
CURRENT REPORT
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Item 8.01. Other Events.
On Saturday, August 21, 2021, TSYS, a Global Payments company and an important vendor to Shift4 Payments, experienced a significant platform outage resulting in a payment processing service disruption that lasted for several hours. TSYS is utilized by many major credit card issuers and payment processors, which meant the impact of Saturday’s outage was felt by many card accepting merchants and cardholders across the nation.
While Shift4 is not at fault, it is taking steps to lessen the financial impact to its merchants and partners due to the TSYS outage. Shift4 expects the one-time non-recurring cost of the disruption to amount to equal approximately $25 million dollars. Shift4 will seek compensation through a variety of channels, including engaging with the responsible party.
Over the past several years, Shift4 has been developing a next generation in-house platform. This new platform will allow us to eliminate our reliance on third party payment processing technology vendors, and increase our ability to respond to customer needs. Shift4’s platform is currently in beta testing and anticipated to be available to merchants in 2022.
Forward Looking Statements
This Current Report on Form 8-K (“Form 8-K”) contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements contained in this Form 8-K that do not relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the Company’s estimated financial impact of the outage and plans to recoup such costs, as well as their plans to develop a next generation in-house platform. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward- looking statements, including, but not limited to, the following: the effect of the COVID-19 global pandemic on our business and results of operations; our ability to differentiate ourselves from our competitors and compete effectively; our ability to anticipate and respond to changing industry trends and merchant and consumer needs; our ability to continue making acquisitions of businesses or assets; our ability to continue to expand our market share or expand into new markets; our reliance on third-party vendors to provide products and services; our ability to integrate our services and products with operating systems, devices, software and web browsers; our ability to maintain merchant and software partner relationships and strategic partnerships; the effects of global economic, political and other conditions on consumer, business and government spending; our compliance with governmental regulation and other legal obligations, particularly related to privacy, data protection and information security, and consumer protection laws; our ability to establish, maintain and enforce effective risk management policies and procedures; our ability to protect our systems and data from continually evolving cybersecurity risks, security breaches and other technological risks; potential harm caused by software defects, computer viruses and development delays; the effect of degradation of the quality of the products and services we offer; potential harm caused by increased customer attrition; potential harm caused by fraud by merchants or others; potential harm caused by damage to our reputation or brands; our ability to recruit, retain and develop qualified personnel; our reliance on a single or limited number of suppliers; the effects of seasonality and volatility on our operating results; the effect of various legal proceedings; our ability to raise additional capital to fund our operations; our ability to protect, enforce and defend our intellectual property rights; our ability to establish and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting and disclosure controls and procedures; our compliance with laws, regulations and enforcement activities that affect our industry; our dependence on distributions from Shift4 Payments, LLC to pay our taxes and expenses, including payments under the Tax Receivable Agreement; and the significant influence Rook and Searchlight have over us, including control over decisions that require the approval of stockholders. These and other important factors are described in “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements,” and “Risk Factors” in Part I, Item 1A in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements made in this Form 8-K. Any such forward-looking statements represent management’s estimates as of the date of this Form 8-K. While we may elect to update such forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we disclaim any obligation to do so, even if subsequent events cause our views to change.
SIGNATURES
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized.
| SHIFT4 PAYMENTS, INC. | ||||||
| Date: August 25, 2021 | By: | /s/ Jordan Frankel | ||||
| Jordan Frankel | ||||||
| General Counsel and Secretary | ||||||