Securus Technologies, a leader in the prison payphone industry, recently signed a deal to purchase JPay, Inc., the IT Business Net reported.
JPay leads the market in technology that provides electronic funds transfers, payments, email, entertainment and educational apps to prisoners in more than 30 state prison systems.
“It’s a really smart move for Securus to buy them out,” Miguel Saucedo told an online reporter for Truthout. Saucedo’s brother is incarcerated in the Illinois Department of Corrections. “They will completely monopolize the business; a real model for the prison industrial complex.”
According to Truthout, the prison payphone industry generates an estimated $1.2 billion a year in revenue.
“This transaction thrusts Securus into the fastest growing segments in corrections: payments, email and most recently, inmate tablets,” Rick Smith, CEO of Securus Technologies, told IT Business Net. “We announced the transaction on April 14, 2015, and since that time we secured the debt and equity funding and necessary approvals from the state and federal regulatory bodies and closed our transaction.”
Smith said with the signing of this deal his company can offer almost anything that is high-tech and software-based for correctional facilities to “operate a modern prison or jail.”
“We are always eager to expand our footprint,” said Ryan Shapiro, JPay’s CEO. “Our products deliver tremendous value to every constituent; the prison staff, family and friends and of course, the inmate. Our focus is to develop groundbreaking products, then gain adoption on a massive scale. With Securus behind us, we can now make that happen in a fraction of the time.”
According to IT Business Net, JPay was founded in 2002 as a payments company and later evolved to include a digital platform.
Securus provides its services to more than 2,600 law enforcement and correctional facilities and to more than 1 million inmates across North America.
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