Ingenico

Founded in France in 1980, where chip cards caught on well before they did in the US. That head start paid off when the rest of the world moved from magnetic stripe to chip and PIN. Acquisitions including China's Landi and the payments firm Bambora made it the world's largest terminal maker alongside Verifone.

Payments giant Worldline bought Ingenico in 2020 and, two years later, sold the terminal business on to funds managed by Apollo. The name survives on the hardware. Shops rarely notice who owns the box; they notice when it dies on a Saturday.