Later, a company Strange headed bought a majority stake in the startup and eventually focused its business on CoreCard, specifically 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. 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.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/apple-card-corecard-leland-strange-ff5ac7da?st=BFSbvF