Clover was incorporated October 15, 2010 and raised $5.5M on November 1, 2010. The lead investor was Sutter Hill Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and a number of angel Investors. The company was founded by John Beatty, Leonard Speiser, and Kelvin Zheng. The company secured an additional $3M convertible note from Sutter Hill Ventures in April 2012.
On December 28, 2012, Clover entered into a merger agreement with First Data Corporation. In a radio interview with Wharton professor Rahul Kapoor the structure of the acquisition was explained. An operating agreement was put into place whereby Clover would receive $100M in funding to run independently. First Data would be responsible for sales and support, while Clover built all new payment hardware/software for the company. The deal utilized a "Founder's Clause" that would trigger a very large penalty payment if the parent company interfered with operations of Clover. Thirty two months after the acquisition Clover was mentioned 88 times in the S-1 filed by First Data Corporation.
Clover launched its first hardware solution, the Clover Station, in 2013 and began shipping it in January 2014. Clover opened its App Marketplace to third party developers in 2014. Gyft announced the launch of its Gift Cloud Service on Clover in April 2014.
On September 9, 2014 Clover announced its work with Apple to support Apple Pay via its Android POS Platform. Clover described the functionality in a blog post that was featured on the home page of Hacker News.
Clover's third hardware product, the Clover Mini was launched by First Data on June 16, 2015. Like Clover Mobile, Clover Mini is a PCI PTS 4.0 approved, EMVCo compliant contact and contactless next generation payment device. Clover Mini has a built-in receipt printer and is designed to be a terminal replacement with the support for advanced payments interfaces, while also allowing Merchants to install apps from the Clover App Market. Clover Mini also features an USB hub allowing easy interface of peripherals such as external barcode scanners, cash drawer and a Merchant keypad (for cases where the Mini is Customer-facing).
