By AnnaMaria Andriotis | Photographs by Melissa Golden for WSJ

Leland Strange is addicted to Dr Pepper and goes to Waffle House so often the staff knows how he likes his hash browns: with onions burned to a crisp.

The unassuming 84-year-old is the force behind the little-known company that gives Apple's credit card distinctive features, like bills on the first of every month and a payment wheel that shows cardholders their projected interest costs. His business confidants include Metallica's co-manager, who is also his company's second-biggest individual shareholder.

Now, Strange's company, CoreCard, is at risk of losing its biggest client as a result of Apple's imploding credit-card partnership with Goldman Sachs.

JPMorgan Chase is in advanced talks to take over as the card's issuer from Goldman, in what would be one of the biggest credit-card deals ever, The Wall Street Journal reported. Strange has publicly mused that the company could lose the Apple credit card if JPMorgan were to take over.

It was just around seven years ago that CoreCard pulled off a major coup by partnering with Goldman on the Apple card. CoreCard's valuation peaked at $490 million a few days after the card was launched. To this day, no other major bank uses CoreCard, and the payment-processing industry remains dominated by a handful of behemoths.

When Goldman signaled in early 2023 that it would be pulling back from consumer lending, CoreCard's stock began plummeting. Its shares fell almost 70% by March 2024 and have since whipsawed and regained some ground.

Even if it loses the Apple card, CoreCard got some security about its future Wednesday, when payments company Euronet Worldwide announced it would buy CoreCard for about $248 million in an all-stock deal.

Strange, who is the company's chief executive officer, wishes he had decided to let go when the company might have fetched more. "We have been a year late in selling," said Strange, who became a millionaire decades ago after founding a company that made computer accessories.

A big whale

CoreCard's unlikely story stretches back to 1986, when Strange invested about $100,000 of his own money in a small credit-card startup in Florida. About a decade later, Intelligent Systems, which Strange led as CEO and chairman, bought a majority stake in the company.

By 2016, Intelligent Systems had sold most of its investments except for what had become the CoreCard business. That team had been focusing on writing software code for credit cards that would be easier to customize.

"We weren't convinced, but we felt we had something here that would be a winner," Strange said.

It turned out a big whale was on the horizon.

Founders of a California credit-card startup called Final arrived at Strange's office in 2015 in search of a processor, and soon after the companies struck a partnership.

By the end of 2017, Goldman snapped up Final as part of its push to become a credit-card issuer. The Wall Street giant then entered into a contract with CoreCard to run the Apple credit card.

Cliff Burnstein, who owns 11% of CoreCard, was in a meeting with his client, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, when he got an alert that CoreCard's stock was up 20%.

"I thought holy s -- , they must have gotten the Apple account," said Burnstein, who first invested in the company in the 1980s when he was scouring for bargain stocks.

CoreCard was about to go from processing payments for niche customers to more than 10 million Apple card users and had less than a year to prep. "We told Goldman and Apple we can do this, but we will need your help," Strange said.

Among Apple's must-haves: a payment wheel showing how much interest cardholders would be charged depending on how much of their balance they pay and all cardholders getting bills on the first of the month.

Most card programs send out cardholder bills on a rolling basis throughout the month, in part to avoid inundating customer-service centers. The Apple card's setup resulted in delays in addressing the flood of customer queries at the start of each month, including about fraudulent charges.

That contributed to regulatory headaches for Goldman and Apple, including an enforcement action last year by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Goldman was also losing billions of dollars from its consumer-lending expansion and facing internal strife about the strategy. By the end of 2022, it decided to start pulling back on the business.

The Wall Street firm accounts for at least 60% of CoreCard's revenue, most of which is tied to the Apple card.

A fire sale

For a while, Strange pondered whether to take the company private, something that private-equity firms had approached him about.

He expressed his reservations to Burnstein, who said he would support Strange's decision. "I said to him you built this company, I have great trust in your judgment and whatever decision you make," said Burnstein.

Early this year, Strange contacted around six investment banks with a bit of a dare: If they found a company that CoreCard would agree to sell itself to for a minimum of $250 million, the bankers could be on the deal. Strange had told suitors about two years earlier that he wouldn't sell for anything less than $400 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

In the end, CoreCard's deal came about after Strange met Euronet CEO Mike Brown at a conference.

Euronet, which provides debit-card processing for banks and fintechs mostly in Europe and Asia, plans to pitch CoreCard's credit-card processing services to its clients. CoreCard's Apple work will be a selling point, Brown said.

Since JPMorgan has in-house processing capabilities, Strange thinks it is unlikely that the Apple card will continue on in the long run with CoreCard if the bank takes over as the issuer.

That risk also exists if a different issuer wins the deal.

"CoreCard is in a very unique and odd situation," Strange said.

Strange, who has the Lord's Prayer on a wall in his office, thanked God on the company's earnings call last fall for giving him the ability to continue running CoreCard at his age. He plans to give away his wealth to Christian missions.

Write to AnnaMaria Andriotis at annamaria.andriotis@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 03, 2025 11:00 ET (15:00 GMT)

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