When a new cell phone customer walked into a store in 1996, the carrier had minutes to decide whether to trust them with a phone and a monthly bill. Lightbridge made that call. The Massachusetts company sold software and services that checked credit, flagged fraud and activated new subscribers. Nine of the 12 largest US cellular carriers were clients when it went public. A decade later it would turn itself into a different company entirely.

Credit Checks at the Counter

Lightbridge began in June 1989 as Credit Technologies, founded by Torrence Harder and Michael Perfit, and took its new name in 1994. Pamela Reeve ran it as chief executive. Cellular carriers were adding subscribers as fast as they could, and bad debt and fraud ate into every new account. Lightbridge built systems to qualify, activate and keep customers. By its offering it served 34 wireless carriers, including the only two then running new digital PCS networks.

From Phones to Payments

Lightbridge priced its offering at $10 a share in September 1996 and listed on Nasdaq under LTBG. Its business followed the wireless industry through mergers and consolidation, which shrank its customer list. In 2004 it bought Authorize.Net, a gateway that let small online merchants accept cards. The payments arm became the whole company: Lightbridge sold its telecom units and renamed itself Authorize.Net Holdings. CyberSource bought it in 2007, and Visa bought CyberSource in 2010.

Cover: No. 37: Miyanokoshi, from the series "Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaido", Utagawa Hiroshige. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for lanterns crossing a bridge at night (Lightbridge).