Mergers & Acquisitions

Signicat Acquired by Nordic Capital

Signicat Acquired by Nordic Capital
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Signicat

Identity assurance provider Signicat has been acquired by private equity investor Nordic Capital, which hopes to accelerate the company’s international expansion. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Fredrik Näslund, Partner at the Advisor to the Nordic Capital Funds, said Signicat “has shown consistent high growth since inception, driven both by a rapidly increasing number of customers and strong volume growth among existing customers.” He added that the company’s “highly experienced management team is well positioned to capitalize on enormous growth opportunities across geographies, customer verticals and products, as the digital transformation of the economy continues.”

Nordic Capital acquired Signicat from Secure Identity Holding, Viking Venture III, and other shareholders. Viking will re-invest proceeds from the deal, making it a minority owner.

Signicat’s digital identity solutions make customer onboarding faster, more secure, and compliant with privacy and data protection regulations by replacing paper-based processes. At FinovateEurope 2017, the company showcased Signicat Assure, a digital identity verification product; and Signicat Sign, an e-signature offering.

Gunnar Nordseth, CEO and Co-Founder of Signicat, referred to Nordic Capital as “the most prominent and experienced investors” in fintech and said that the company is the “perfect partner” to support Signicat’s international expansion strategy.

Founded in 2007, Signicat’s 115 employees across offices in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal serve 500 clients including Klarna, Rabobank, Santander, Société Générale and Western Union, BMW, and Konica Minolta. Prior to today’s announcement, Signicat had raised almost $9 million.

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NIIT Technologies to Acquire WHISHWORKS IT Consulting

NIIT Technologies to Acquire WHISHWORKS IT Consulting
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, NIIT Technologies

IT solutions organization NIIT Technologies is making a move this week to acquire WHISHWORKS. The IT consulting firm is expected to strengthen NIIT’s digital capabilities and complement the company’s offerings to create a powerful solution in the digital integration space.

Specific terms of the deal, which is subject to regulatory approvals, have not been disclosed. However, NIIT announced it will acquire a 53% stake initially and purchase the remainder of the company over the next two years, with compensation dependent on financial performance. The company will be making the purchase in an all-cash transaction, funded through internal accruals.

“WHISHWORKS fits into our overall digital strategy, enhances our footprint in a high demand space, and is a significant addition to our existing capability spectrum in digital integration. This initiative is in line with our strategy to drive growth and create value over the long term by enhancing capabilities and domain depth, adding new partnerships, and making well-considered acquisitions that complement our existing strengths,” said NIIT Technologies CEO Sudhir Singh.

Founded in 2010, WHISHWORKS specializes in MuleSoft and big data technologies. The company’s 250 employees build around MuleSoft’s AnyPoint platform and its consultants hold over 350+ MuleSoft certifications, making it the largest group of MuleSoft certified experts in the EMEA region.

WHISHWORKS Founder and CEO Sri Arardhi said that the company sees “substantial opportunities and growth potential” with the new deal. Specifically, Arardhi noted that the company is “thrilled” to have NIIT Technologies’ support, presence, and scale in the U.S.

NIIT Technologies was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. At FinovateSpring 2016 the company demoed Digital Foresight, a predictive analytics platform that enables a enterprises to develop actionable strategy for marketing, operations, and risk management.

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OnDeck Acquires Evolocity

OnDeck Acquires Evolocity
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, On Deck Capital

Alternative small business lending platform OnDeck finalized its purchase of Canada-based small business lender Evolocity Financial Group. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“The closing of this transaction signals a new era of online lending innovation on behalf of Canada’s small businesses,” said Noah Breslow, CEO of OnDeck. “As one of Canada’s leading online lenders to the crucial small business sector, we are well-positioned to provide financing options that will benefit Canadian small business owners from coast to coast.”

Evolocity brings expertise in Canadian underwriting practices, as well as local business relationships and knowledge to the table. Combined with OnDeck’s marketing and international online lending experience, the two businesses will offer small businesses across Canada access to working capital finance solutions.

The combined companies will operate under the name and branding of OnDeck Canada, with Evolocity CEO Neil Wechsler serving as CEO of OnDeck Canada. Evolocity co-founders David Souaid and Harley Greenspoon will serve as chief revenue officer and chief operating officer, respectively.

OnDeck was founded in 2007 and has loaned more than $10 billion to small businesses in 700 different industries across the United States, Canada, and Australia since launch. The company leverages its OnDeck Score to underwrite loans and deliver funds to small businesses in as little as 24 hours.

OnDeck most recently demoed at FinovateSpring 2012. The publicly traded company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ONDK and has a market capitalization of $418 million.

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TradeIt To Be Acquired by TradingView

TradeIt To Be Acquired by TradingView
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, TradeIt

Trading API and app developer TradeIt has agreed to be acquired by long-time partner TradingView. The company will leverage TradeIt’s technology to bring mobile trading to the more than 10 million monthly active retail users in 150+ countries who use its social trading platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition is the latest evolution in a relationship that extends back “several years,” according to TradeIt CEO and founder Nathan Richardson. “TradingView’s vision aligns strongly with our view of the distributed financial networks of the future,” he said. “(We’ve) always felt our complimentary products and shared retail investing users makes us stronger together.”

TradeIt’s API infrastructure connects to more than $70 billion in actively traded assets at top U.S. brokerages. Its technology enables financial publishers and app developers to link users’ brokerage and investment accounts, and provides support for transactions in most asset classes, including stocks, ETFs, options, and currencies. TradeIt’s solutions include Trading Ticket,  an order management tool; PortfolioView, which links and provides access to account balances and positions; and Account Opening, which enables customers to open new brokerage accounts in less than two minutes.

TradeIt noted in its statement that brokers have seen a 10x increase in activity among active traders and a 5x gain in account funding when linked to TradeIt’s platform. The company’s partners include Bloomberg, Business Insider, as well as fellow Finovate alums TipRanks and Divy.

In the announcement, TradeIt and TradingView quoted Insight Venture Partners’ Paul Szurek who express optimism about the new, combined entity. “The product pipeline of account opening and messaging services being delivered by TradeIt makes TradingView an essential retail investors service,” he said. Insight Venture Partners led a Series B round for TradingView last year.

TradingView CEO and founder Denis Globa added the combination will help make his company “part of the backbone of the investing ecosystem.” He said that TradingView also will add to TradeIt’s ecosystem with new account opening and messaging solutions. TradeIt users will gain access to TradingView’s charting and quoting functionality.

TradeIt demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2015. Founded in 2014, the company is headquartered in New York City.

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eToro Buys Blockchain Company Firmo

eToro Buys Blockchain Company Firmo
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: eToro, Mergers & Acquisitions

Just weeks after launching in the U.S., trading and investment platform eToro announced plans to purchase Copenhagen-based blockchain firm Firmo. The terms of the deal, which marks eToro’s first acquisition, were not disclosed.

With today’s purchase, eToro aims to grow tokenized financial assets on its platform. To facilitate that growth, the Israel-based company is specifically interested in bringing on Firmo’s research and development team.

“This acquisition,” eToro CEO Yoni Assia told Bloomberg, “will help boost our growth in the future tokenized economy. We aim to be active players in blockchain consolidation.” And eToro may be ahead of the curve on this one– according to Bloomberg, tokenized assets will play a huge role in 2019 as investors seek to convert assets such as property and stocks into tradable digital assets.

Founded in 2017, Firmo offers a programming language called FirmoLang that runs on a sidechain. Exchanges can leverage FirmoLang to create financial instruments such as P2P lending platforms or cryptocurrency derivatives with tokens. And Firmo is versatile, allowing the tokens to be run on any blockchain.

eToro most recently showcased CopyFunds for Partners at FinovateEurope 2017. Originally known for being a social trading platform, the company began pioneering bitcoin trading in 2013 via CFDs and in 2017 allowed clients to trade and invest in Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, and other cryptocurrencies. eToro has raised $223 million since it was founded in 2007.

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Streamdata.io Acquired by Axway

Streamdata.io Acquired by Axway
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Streamdata.io

Data insights company Streamdata.io has been acquired by Axway Software in a deal this week. The France-based startup sold for an undisclosed amount.

Vince Padua, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Axway, said that the company made the purchase to “enable [its] customers and partners with a prescriptive journey toward digital transformation and hybrid integration” and to “advance [its] strategy in enabling businesses to accelerate their IT and digital transformation.”

Streamdata.io’s event-driven API management will boost Axway’s AMPLIFY integration platform. Streamdata.io brings two assets to the table– its event-driven API management that helps support real-time and event-driven use cases, and its digital transformation methodology designed around API adoption and maturity. Streamdata.io’s offerings, on the other hand, will benefit from Axway’s 11,000 customers across 100 countries.

“Axway and Streamdata.io share a passion for data. In joining Axway, we can help our customers stay ahead of the digital transformation curve by securely enabling real-time data,” said Streamdata.io CEO Eric Horesnyi. “We look forward to jointly paving the way for one of the most innovative hybrid integration platforms on the market.”

Founded in 2008, Streamdata.io had raised $12.2 million before today’s acquisition. At FinDEVr London 2017, Horesnyi showed how developers can leverage Streamdata.io to code real-time mobile trading in less than 15 minutes with any API. Last June, the company unveiled its API Gallery featuring more than 360 different entities with 14,400+ API paths spanning 420 topics.

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Envestnet to Acquire PIEtech for $500 Million

Envestnet to Acquire PIEtech for $500 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Envestnet, Mergers & Acquisitions

Wealthtech innovator Envestnet announced earlier this month plans for its tenth acquisition. The Chicago-based company will bolster its existing advisor offerings with the purchase of PIEtech, a deal expected to close mid-year 2019.

PIEtech is the parent company of MoneyGuide, a suite of goals-based financial planning applications for advisors. “Financial planning is a key component of our vision for enabling Financial Wellness,” said Jud Bergman, Chairman and CEO of Envestnet. “With MoneyGuide’s financial planning applications more deeply integrated into Envestnet’s wealth management solutions, enterprises, advisors and their clients can benefit from a frictionless wealth management technology solution across the application stack, driving higher productivity and better client outcomes.”

Envestnet will continue to build on the success of MoneyGuide’s offerings, including MoneyGuideOne, MoneyGuidePro and MoneyGuideElite. These solutions, which serve tens of thousands of financial advisors, are integrated with more than 150 wealth management providers.

Envestnet will leverage the acquisition to complement its Logix and Apprise features to provide advisors and their clients with access to financial planning capabilities. The deal will also enable Envestnet to offer additional domestic and international financial wellness solutions and will boost cross-selling opportunities.

Envestnet | Yodlee showcased its predictive financial wellness and intelligence solution at FinovateFall 2018. Late last year, the company entered into a strategic partnership with Blackrock in which Envestnet integrated BlackRock’s Digital Wealth technologies into its platform.

Envestnet was founded in 1999 and acquired Yodlee in 2015 for $660 million. Envestnet | Yodlee is a public company listed on NYSE under the ticker ENV. It has a market capitalization of $3 billion.

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Prepaid Technologies Acquires Dash from Karmic Labs

Prepaid Technologies Acquires Dash from Karmic Labs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Karmic Labs, Mergers & Acquisitions

Business payment solutions provider Prepaid Technologies has acquired Karmic Labs’ Dash, as well as other select assets, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication.)

The Dash prepaid purchasing card portfolio and expense management solution will be added to Prepaid Technologies’ existing suite of services. Several members of Karmic’s key personnel will join the Prepaid Technologies team.

Prepaid Technologies provides customers with a mobile-focused platform enabling business owners to move money in real-time to individual cards and accounts for everyday purchases.

“This cardholder portfolio more than doubles our existing expense management business, elevating purchasing to the level of our payroll, incentive and rewards lines of business,” said Prepaid Technologies CEO, Stephen Faust.

Over the coming months Prepaid Technologies will integrate the Dash portfolio and will provide clients with access to additional solutions, including: payroll card programs that it claims will improve bottom-line performance and value for employees; reward and incentive cards; state-of-the-art API Payment Integrations that will support faster, more efficient internal operations.

Current Karmic and Dash customers will also receive an expanded range of services, including Prepaid Technologies’ dedicated customer support.

Karmic Labs demonstrated Dash at FinovateSpring 2015. The company was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

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InComm Acquires Linq3 Technologies

InComm Acquires Linq3 Technologies
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: InComm, Mergers & Acquisitions

Prepaid payments technology firm InComm marked its eighth acquisition this week with the purchase of Linq3 Technologies, an Atlanta, Georgia-based digital lottery company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal gives InComm access to Linq3’s suite of lottery products that leverage consumer interaction at retailers’ point of sales systems. Brooks Smith, InComm founder and CEO, noted that incorporating the new technology will enable InComm “to deliver new product solutions to create experiences that will engage the consumer – right at the retailer’s point of sale.”

Smith also noted that this week’s purchase extends beyond technology and into Linq3’s human resources, offering InComm lottery industry intelligence. “This transaction brings us an experienced management team with a great deal of industry knowledge that can be leveraged to transform and grow lottery business across North America.”

In anticipation of the acquisition, InComm has already integrated with central gaming system vendors in the U.S. In fact, the company plans to launch lottery products including point of sale-activated draw games, prize payouts and validations, and prepaid state lottery gift cards for its retail clients.

Tom Spiegel, CEO of Linq3, noted that InComm will especially benefit from state lotteries. “Today, state lotteries face many challenges tied to retailer expansion, new player acquisition, and product innovation in an increasingly digital world. Through InComm’s acquisition of Linq3, state lotteries will now have the ability to reach more players through new and current retailers, retailers can realize more revenue by driving new consumer traffic to their locations, and lottery players will benefit from easy, simple and new ways to purchase and play lottery products.”

InComm offers more than 500,000 points of retail distribution with 1,000+ brand partners in more than 30 countries. The company debuted CorFire Mobile Commerce at FinovateFall 2011. More recently, InComm showed off the Cashtie API at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. Last June, the Atlanta-based company teamed up with Fiserv to make it easier for consumers to pay their bills using cash at retailers’ physical point of sale systems.

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UK-based GBG Acquires IDology in $300 Million All-Cash Deal

UK-based GBG Acquires IDology in $300 Million All-Cash Deal
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: IDology, Mergers & Acquisitions

Identity verification and fraud prevention specialist IDology has been acquired by U.K.-based identity data intelligence firm, GBG, for $300 million (£233 million) in cash.

The deal will give GBG broader reach into the North American market; in a statement, the company said 99% of IDology’s revenues come from the United States. The acquisition will also add technologies like IDology’s ExpectID suite of onboarding, verification, and authentication solutions, to GBG’s offerings. IDology’s senior management team will remain intact, with the company’s employee base joining GBG.

“For the past fifteen years, IDology has provided multi-layered identity verification,” company president and CEO John Dancu said. “With the combination of IDology and GBG, we intend to innovate, delivering exceptional solutions for our customers, focusing on driving customer revenue and preventing fraud.”

IDology reported revenues of more than $38 million in 2018, at a CAGR of 16% and EBITDA of more than $16 million. In addition to praising the company’s growth, GBG CEO Chris Clark characterized IDology as a valuable partner in its mission to make broader inroads to the $1.5 billion U.S. identity verification market.

“With attractive organic growth, significant synergies and a strong cultural alignment, this is a high-quality addition to GBG,” Clark said. “The combination of IDology and GBG will enable us to meet the growing customer appetite for an identity verification provider with global capabilities and scale in key markets.”

The acquisition comes amid a new partnership announced between IDology and healthcare enterprise identification firm, NextGate. The Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI) platform will use IDology’s technology to help its customers improve accuracy in patient ID matching and bolster data collection and remediation work. IDology also recently announced that Dancou had been named to the Top 100 Influencers in Identity 2019 roster published by One World Identity.

IDology demonstrated its ExpectID Enterprise solution at FinovateFall 2012. Last year, the Atlanta, Georgia-based company was featured in the Silicon Review’s roundup of the 50 Fastest Growing Tech Companies. IDology was also named one of the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For in Atlanta by the National Association for Business Resources.

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SumUp Acquires Polish E-Commerce Innovator Shoplo

SumUp Acquires Polish E-Commerce Innovator Shoplo
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, SumUp

London-based payments firm SumUp has bought Polish e-commerce platform Shoplo for an expansion of its product suite, reports Antony Peyton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Financial details were not disclosed.

Marc-Alexander Christ, co-founder of SumUp, said: “From the boutique clothing stores to florists and microbrewers, our platform is constantly looking to the technology solution which helps their business to flourish. By leveraging Shoplo’s technology, SumUp’s merchants will get easy access to creating their very own online stores.”

Today, SumUp said its product suite encompasses accepting payments on-the-go or online, managing business at the point of sale, invoicing and bookkeeping, third-party integrations of payments, and other services via SDKs and APIs.

With the addition of Warsaw-based Shoplo, SumUp wants to expand its services for its one million users.

The idea is to offer online storefronts with multiple templates, features such as international shipping, chat functionality, invoicing and payments, and multi-channel capability which enables merchants to sell on different marketplaces – such as Facebook, eBay or Etsy – from within one central dashboard.

Shoplo has 30 employees and SumUp says their expertise will help it to expand the e-commerce area of its business.

SumUp recently purchased Danish company Debitoor, an invoicing-software platform originally established for freelancers and SMEs which will be integrated within SumUp’s user offering. Debitoor’s team of 45 employees joined SumUp.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, SumUp demonstrated its platform at FinovateEurope 2013. Ranked at the top of the Inc. 5000 Europe last year, SumUp launched its 3G-powered credit card reader back in October. The technology enables merchants to process payments without requiring a mobile app or Wi-Fi connectivity.

SumUp has raised $44.3 million in funding, and includes Life.SREDA and BBVA Ventures among its investors.

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Accenture Acquires Select Assets from Banking Software Platform Zafin

Accenture Acquires Select Assets from Banking Software Platform Zafin
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Accenture, Mergers & Acquisitions, Zafin

Digital banking platform provider Zafin and global professional services company Accenture have forged a new relationship that is both a strategic alliance and an acquisition. The companies have announced a “joint go-to-market strategy” that will make Accenture the preferred integrator of Zafin’s financial platform. And by bringing on “select employees” from Zafin’s professional services business, Accenture also gains the technical integration and development capabilities it needs to enhance its own financial services offerings.

For Zafin, the alliance and acquisition gives the company the opportunity to “focus squarely on product innovation and technology” said CEO and founder Al Karim Somji. He added that the partnership also provides the Toronto, Ontario, Canada-based firm with “rapid scalability.”

“We are particularly proud of the work we’ve done with our clients globally,” Somji said, “and expect our expanded relationship with Accenture to enable us to accelerate our momentum in the market.”

Zafin offers financial institutions around the world technology that drives relationship pricing, bundling, and rates management strategies. The company’s platform enables financial institutions to boost revenue and efficiency by upgrading legacy infrastructure which, among other benefits, helps them improve client engagement via solutions and services that deliver greater customization for consumers and greater profitability for banks.

Head of Accenture’s global banking practice Alan McIntyre blamed legacy IT systems for the inability of many FIs to modernize the customer experience, and pointed to Zafin’s technology as a solution. “Zafin’s software enables financial institutions to improve their pricing, personalization and product configuration without having to replace their legacy systems,” the senior managing director said.

Zafin demonstrated its miRevenue enterprise banking platform at FinovateFall 2017. In May of this year, the company announced a partnership with Celero, an IT solution provider for credit unions. In April, Zafin inked a strategic partnership with the Empire Startups, a  global community of fintech entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators.

Named one of Canada’s 50 fastest growing companies in 2016 by Deloitte, Zafin has more than 40 global banking customers in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, and India. The company was founded in 2002, and raised $30 million in funding previous to the alliance and acquisition by Accenture.

With clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture offers a wide variety of strategy, consulting, technology, and operations services and solutions. The company partnered with mBank at FinovateFall 2013 to demonstrate the Polish bank’s next generation online banking platform. Accenture was founded in 1989, and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. With a market capitalization of $106 billion, Accenture trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “ACN.”

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