Jared Isaacman started a card-processing business at 16, and twenty years later he took it public in the middle of a pandemic. The company, first called United Bank Card and later Shift4, moved money for restaurants and hotels. Those were the businesses COVID-19 had just shut down. Shift4 went public in June 2020 anyway, and investors bid it up. Its founder later flew to orbit and went on to lead NASA.

Payments Inside the Software

Isaacman founded the company in 1999 as United Bank Card. It grew by selling card processing to small merchants, then focused on businesses with complex checkouts. Restaurants, hotels, and stadiums ran their own point-of-sale software. Shift4 built its payments into those systems, so a merchant could take cards without changing how it worked. The bet was that payments sold through the software a merchant already trusted would be hard to replace.

Thirty-Three Dollars in a Pandemic

Shift4 priced its IPO at $23 a share in June 2020, above its expected range of $19 to $21. Isaacman bought $100 million more stock in a private placement alongside the offering. The shares closed their first day at $33.54, up about 46 percent. In 2021 Isaacman commanded Inspiration4, a private SpaceX flight to orbit. In December 2025 he was sworn in as NASA's 15th administrator. Shift4 still trades on the New York Stock Exchange as FOUR.

Cover: The Mieido Fan Shop, Utagawa Toyokuni I. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a busy shop (point of sale).