Mergers & Acquisitions

Sella Open Fintech Platform to Acquire Vipera for $34 Million

Sella Open Fintech Platform to Acquire Vipera for $34 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Vipera

Mobile financial services company Vipera has agreed to be acquired by Italy-based Sella Open Fintech Platform (SOFP), the fintech arm of Gruppo Banca Sella, a family-owned banking and financial services group.

Talk of the acquisition first began on March 22. This week, SOFP’s board of directors and Vipera Directors Luciano Martucci and Martin Perrin have agreed upon a cash offer. The offer price of $0.11 per share values Vipera at just over $34 million, a premium of 20%. Commenting on the offer, which is subject to approvals, Vipera Director and Chairman Luciano Martucci said, “Gruppo Banca Sella has been a valued customer of Vipera for some time and a shareholder since July 2017. I am pleased that our increasingly close relationship has led to our shareholders being offered a fair price and to Vipera’s businesses being able to develop as part of the SOFP Group.”

Vipera was founded in 2015 and went public in 2010. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker VIP. Headquartered in London, Vipera has 125 employees and three million registered users. Last July, Vipera acquired SoftTelecom for $1.5 million.

The company offers a range of personal and corporate banking systems, along with customer engagement analytics and marketing tools. At FinovateEurope 2016, Vipera demonstrated MOTIF, a system that offers mobile banking, mobile payments, and mobile card control. The access to consumer data offers banks actionable insights that generate location and context-based mobile offers. The personalized offers are sent to the user’s phone at an appropriate time to enhance the shopping experience and build user engagement with their bank.

Most recently, Vipera teamed up with Mastercard at FinovateEurope 2018 to debut SME-pay, a mobile payment solution tailored for small and medium sized businesses. During the demo, Vipera Chief Commercial Officer Simon Pearce, along with Mastercard’s VP of Small Business Products Dick Paul, demoed how SME-pay allows business owners to decide when, where, and how employees can use their business payment cards.

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FreeAgent Acquired by RBS

FreeAgent Acquired by RBS
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FreeAgent, Mergers & Acquisitions

Cloud accounting platform FreeAgent has agreed to a takeover bid from the Royal Bank of Scotland this week. CEO Ed Molyneux and the rest of the board have accepted the offer, which values FreeAgent at approximately $75 million (£53 million).

In a blog post announcement, Molyneux said that the acquisition will allow the company to progress toward its vision and improve the FreeAgent platform for both customers and partners. “As part of a larger organisation we want to accelerate our growth ambitions in the micro-business and accountancy practice space, as well as significantly improve our core product,” he added.

This agreement comes just over a year after FreeAgent began working with RBS. The two formed a distribution partnership last January in which RBS offered FreeAgent’s accounting software services to its small business clients. The deal will help both parties leverage new opportunities to offer a more integrated banking and accounting experience for small businesses since, as Molyneux said, “the lines between banking, accounting and tax are becoming increasingly blurred.”

After the deal is closed, FreeAgent will continue to operate business as usual. In a Q&A, Molyneux said the company has “no intention of significantly changing the way that [it does] business with [its] customers.” FreeAgent shareholders will receive $1.70 (120 pence) per share. This represents an 86% premium to yesterday’s share price and a 43% premium to the IPO price of $1.19 (84 pence).

Founded in 2007, FreeAgent offers cloud accounting services for small businesses, an API for easy integration, and integrations with existing startups such as Basecamp, Stripe, PayPal, and Xpenditure. The company also has an offering for accountants and a fully-integrated payroll system.

Molyneux debuted FreeAgent’s Financial Health Insights at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. Since then, the company went public in 2016 and last month launched the Customer Sales Report, which allows businesses to see how much income they’ve received from each customer.

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ActivePath Acquired by Broadridge

ActivePath Acquired by Broadridge
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ActivePath, Mergers & Acquisitions

Email engagement company ActivePath will soon broaden the scope of how it transforms customer engagement. That’s because the New York-based company has been acquired by Broadridge Financial Solutions, a communications, technology, and data analytics firm. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2007, ActivePath originally offered its flagship ActiveMail solution but created a more robust email banking offering after merging with PowerInbox in late 2012. The company allows banks, brokers, and other billers to quickly compose and send website-like, interactive experiences via emails created using HTML. Under the new agreement with Broadridge, ActivePath will offer omni-channel capabilities including SMS, social, audio UI, chatbots, and personal cloud solutions.

(above) With ActivePath, organizations can edit mass emails using drag and drop editing

In the press release, President of Broadridge Customer Communications, Doug DeSchutter commented on how the company would benefit from bringing on ActivePath. “In ActivePath, we gain a founding management team with rich entrepreneurial experience and a proven track record of innovation, and we are delighted they are joining the Broadridge family,” DeSchutter said.

Broadridge began as the brokerage services division of ADP in 1962 and became independent in 2007. The company is headquartered in New York and employs approximately 10,000 people in 16 countries.

ActivePath debuted ActiveMail at FinovateFall 2010. Before today’s acquisition, the company had raised $13.3 million. Avi Weiss is CEO.

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Experian Acquires ClearScore for $385 Million

Experian Acquires ClearScore for $385 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Experian, Mergers & Acquisitions

About a year after Experian received authorization from the U.K.’s FCA, the company has made further inroads into the nation with the acquisition of U.K.-based ClearScore. The deal is anticipated to close for $385 million (£275 million).

Brian Cassin, Experian CEO described the move as “another important step in our strategy to extend the services we provide to U.K. consumers.” Cassin added, “Our goal is to provide more choice and greater convenience to individuals who want access to personal financial products at the best prices, while also making it easier for credit providers to offer better, more tailored offers to consumers.”

Founded in 2014, ClearScore has onboarded 6 million members in the U.K. through its free membership model. The company matches individuals to personal financial products, offers free credit reports, and provides financial education. Similar to Credit Karma in the U.S., ClearScore generates revenue through referral fees paid by lenders and other service providers on its site. The company is projected to generate $55 million in revenue in 2018, a 50% increase over what it earned in 2017.

Experian will retain the ClearScore brand and include it as part of its broader offering in the U.K. The company says it will benefit from ClearScore’s skills in creating a consumer-friendly user experience and in member engagement. Additionally, the acquisition will expand Experian’s geographical reach into South Africa, where ClearScore recently began offering services.

Additional payout is contingent on future financial performance. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close later in 2018.

Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Experian most recently presented at FinovateFall 2017 where it debuted Text for Credit. The new service allows consumers in search of credit to initiate the process with a text message, allowing them to review and apply for credit offers in minutes using their mobile device. Last month, the company earned a spot on One World Identity’s list of top 100 influencers.

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Bazaarvoice Acquires AddStructure

Bazaarvoice Acquires AddStructure
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Bazaarvoice, Mergers & Acquisitions

Bazaarvoice, a startup that helps retailers find and reach consumers, has agreed to acquire Addstructure, a company that offers search and discovery apps for e-commerce merchants. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Addstructure’s platform, which leverages machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to analyze customer sentiment and product reviews, helps consumers search for and discover products faster. The addition of this capability to Bazaarvoice’s offerings will strengthen consumer-generated content and bolster shopper profiles across its network. Among Addstructure’s clients are Target and Best Buy, which use the company’s technology to analyze online reviews and customer questions that influence purchase decisions.

AddStructure’s employees will join Bazaarvoice’s team. The new team members will work out of offices in New York City and Chicago, where AddStructure was founded.

In a press release, Gene Austin, CEO of Bazaarvoice said, “As consumer behavior continues to evolve, brands and retailers must keep pace with new shopping trends and technologies to deliver engaging and consumer-friendly shopping experiences.” He added that AddStructure’s NLP and machine learning capabilities are an “incredible addition” to the company’s portfolio.

Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, Bazaarvoice has offices in Chicago, London, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, and Sydney. The company debuted Bazaarvoice Conversations at FinovateSpring 2012. The Conversations solution allows brands to capture, moderate, analyze, and display customer word-of-mouth in digital and mobile experiences. In November of last year, Bazaarvoice agreed to be acquired by Marlin Equity Partners, which will acquire each share of outstanding common stock of Bazaarvoice in exchange for $5.50 for a total value of approximately $521 million.

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Temenos Agrees to $1.96 Billion Takeover of Fidessa Group

Temenos Agrees to $1.96 Billion Takeover of Fidessa Group
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Temenos

Swiss banking software technology provider Temenos has agreed to buy its British competitor, Fidessa Group in a deal for $1.96 billion. The transaction, which is subject to conditions, approvals, and regulatory clearances, will close in the first half of 2018.

Andreas Andreades, the Executive Chairman of Temenos, said that under the new agreement, the two firms “will create a global leader across financial services software.” He added, “We truly believe that this powerful combination will accelerate both companies complementary growth strategies in banking and capital markets and will enable us to cross-sell into our existing client bases and capture a greater share of the IT and software spend of banks especially as they move to the cloud.”

With Fidessa under its roof, Temenos plans to increase revenue growth by:

  • Implementing its sales-focused model
  • Broadening Fidessa’s product to cover software solutions from the front to the back office
  • Continuing Fidessa’s strategy of providing software solutions across capital markets
  • Leveraging cross-selling opportunities

The deal is expected to expand Temenos’ relationship with Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks across the globe and deepen the company’s relationships and knowledge in the U.S. and Japan to grow its core banking business. At the same time, Fidessa will benefit from a larger client base. “We are convinced that our combined company will have a unique set of capabilities that when combined with our exceptional people will position us as a core strategic partner to large financial institutions globally looking to upgrade their systems for the digital age,” Andreades said.

Founded in 1993, Temenos debuted its Connect Mobile Banking application at FinovateEurope 2015 in London. Late last year, the company teamed up with Latin America’s largest banking group, Itaú Unibanco Holding. Temenos employs 4,600+ people, operating out of 64 offices. The company’s systems serve more than 2,000 clients in over 150 countries. Temenos has a market capitalization of more than $5 billion.

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Placecast Acquired by Ericsson’s Emodo

Placecast Acquired by Ericsson’s Emodo
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Placecast

In a deal announced today, location-based marketing and loyalty company Placecast has been acquired by Emodo for an undisclosed amount.

Emodo is a Swedish networking and telecom company that helps telcos monetize their subscriber data. The company, which debuted just months ago in November, is an Ericsson-owned entity.

As part of today’s deal, San Francisco-based Placecast’s CEO Alistair Goodman will transition to the role of Emodo Chief Commercial Officer. Placecast’s 38 employees will join Emodo’s workforce of 27 at its headquarters in the same city.

In a blog post, Goodman said that the deal builds on the strengths of both companies. “Placecast brings its leading carrier-verified, location-based data solutions to an experienced Emodo team, backed by Ericsson’s reputation as a neutral, trusted partner for mobile operators, advertisers, and publishers,” he said. The two firms plan to complete the integration by the second quarter of this year.

Founded in 2005, Placecast offers location-based marketing and loyalty programs for mobile operators, payments companies and brands. The company maintains and scrubs location data from more than 400 million mobile user profiles, tens of millions of merchant records, IDs and addresses from around the globe. Placecast’s other location-based solutions include Mobile Data Management Platform, Mobile Demand-Side Platform, and Native Mobile Advertising, among others.

The company demoed Shop Alerts mobile wallet at FinovateSpring 2013, at the height of fintech’s mobile wallet boom. Last July, Placecast launched Location Verification, a solution that leverages data from U.S. carriers to confirm the location accuracy of mobile ads, audiences, and attribution to bring geolocation to the next level.

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ThreatMetrix Acquired by RELX, Becomes Part of LexisNexis Risk Solutions

ThreatMetrix Acquired by RELX, Becomes Part of LexisNexis Risk Solutions
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, ThreatMetrix

It’s the end of an era for ThreatMetrix. The authentication and fraud prevention company has been acquired by RELX Group for $830 million (£580 million). The deal is expected to close in the first half of this year.

The California-based company will operate as part of RELX’s Risk & Business Analytics under the LexisNexis Risk Solutions brand. LexisNexis, which offers authentication solutions to fight fraud, has been one of ThreatMetrix’s long-standing partners. LexisNexis leverages ThreatMetrix’s device intelligence solutions in its Risk Defense Platform and is planning further integration of ThreatMetrix’s capabilities in device, email, and social intelligence.

ThreatMetrix President and CEO Reed Taussig said that the previous partnership exemplifies “strong synergies” between the two organizations. Taussig added, “The benefits our shared customers have realized from the integration of our respective products are unmatched in the industry…. by combining the strength of LexisNexis Risk Solutions and ThreatMetrix into a single business, our customers, partners, and employees will benefit with a unique and compelling market opportunity.”

Founded in 2005, ThreatMetrix analyzes connections among locations, devices, identity, and threat intelligence, and combines this information with behavioral analytics to identify high risk transactions in real time. The company is known for its Digital Identity Network that analyzes 100 million transactions per day across 35,000 websites from 5,000 customers. This digital identity repository encompasses 1.4 billion unique online identities from 4.5 billion devices in 185 countries.

The Digital Identity Network is likely one of the reasons RELX was enticed to make the acquisition. In fact, the $830 million RELX paid for ThreatMetrix is $593 million higher than Pitchbook’s valuation of ThreatMetrix after the company’s 2014 funding round.

ThreatMetrix launched its Digital Identity Graph, which leverages information from the Digital Identity Network, at FinovateAsia 2016. The Digital Identity Graph gathers information on billions of transactions collected from tens of thousands of websites to build a user’s digital identity by analyzing connections between the user, their locations, behaviors, and devices. At FinovateSpring 2017, the company’s CTO, Andreas Baumhof, and Sr. Director of Product Management, Dean Weinert, launched SmartAuthentication for banks with multiple authentication methods. Earlier this month, ThreatMetrix teamed up with GlobalOnePay to power its Sentinel Defend, a fraud detection and scoring engine that protects cross-border transactions.

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Flywire Acquires OnPlan Holdings

Flywire Acquires OnPlan Holdings
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Flywire, Mergers & Acquisitions

Global payment and receivables solutions company Flywire announced today it has acquired OnPlanU and OnPlan Health, both subsidiaries of OnPlan Holdings. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.

OnPlan Health is a web portal and payment solution that offers providers an automated way to settle patient balances. OnPlanU is a student billing and payment solution that enables universities to automate account setup and payments and set up tailored payment schedules for students.

Flywire said that clients have been pushing the company to offer the ability to manage payments and receivables from a single platform. CEO Mike Massaro said that the acquisition “brings a tremendous amount of technical capability and domain expertise to address it. In a short period of time, [OnPlan has] built a very strong product.”

The acquisition not only furthers Flywire’s reach into the healthcare payments space, it also adds more depth to the company’s education payments offerings. Adding OnPlan’s capabilities makes Flywire’s solutions more holistic, covering a range of globally-available services, including:

  • Invoicing
  • Secure payment processing
  • Consumer engagement
  • Recurring payments
  • Automated payment plans
  • Payment tracking
  • Reconciliation
  • Past due payments

OnPlan’s CEO John Talaga and CTO David King will join Flywire’s leadership team, bringing their expertise in healthcare. Talaga will lead Flywire’s healthcare segment, while King will lead the company’s product and development teams focused on education and healthcare. The rest of the OnPlan team will merge into Flywire, working from OnPlan’s Chicago-based office.

Talaga said that Flywire and OnPlan solve “distinct, but related problems, both taking cost and friction out of the payment and receivables process.” He continued, “While we complement their platform in several important ways, Flywire offers OnPlan tremendous scale with supportive and engaged investors, capital for growth, access to new markets, and a global customer support infrastructure.”

Discussing the deal in a press release, managing director of Bain Capital and Flywire board member Matt Harris said, “Both firms share a culture that is all about how to make life better for their clients. That, combined with their complementary capabilities, makes this a perfect fit and will add tremendous value for their customers.”

Flywire, which originally launched as peerTransfer in 2011, facilitates international payments for healthcare, education, and business. The company is headquartered in Boston with operations in the U.K., China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and Spain. The company’s platform processes billions of dollars in payments every year in over 120 different local currencies, connecting more than 1,400 businesses and universities with their customers.

At FinovateSpring 2011, the company presented its original tuition payment platform. Last August, Flywire expanded its operations to Japan and formed a partnership with Volvo to help international student lease vehicles. Flywire has raised a total of $43.2 million.

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Envestnet Finalizes Acquisition of FolioDynamix for $195 Million

Envestnet Finalizes Acquisition of FolioDynamix for $195 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Envestnet, Mergers & Acquisitions

Wealth management intelligence solutions company Envestnet has finalized its acquisition of Actua Corp’s FolioDynamix, a wealth tech solutions company, this week.

The deal, which was first announced in September of last year, was closed for $195 million. The acquisition is expected to add complementary trading tools and brokerage business support to Envestnet’s existing suite of offerings.

Jud Bergman, Envestnet Chairman and CEO said, “This is the next important step in developing a financial wellness network that enables advisors and enterprises to improve their productivity and deliver better outcomes for their clients.”

The deal brings FolioDynamix clients access to Envestnet’s trading tools and commission and brokerage support, as well as integrated wealth management solutions. Joseph Mrak, Chairman and CEO of FolioDynamix said, “We are excited to see where this collaboration takes us and the wealth management industry as a whole.”

Founded in 1999 Envestnet |Yodlee recently won Best of Show for its demo of Financial Health Check at FinovateFall 2017. The new offering leverages consumer data to measure and score their financial health and offers personalized recommendations and tools to help them improve their well-being. In November, the Chicago-based company teamed up with Token to support PSD2 compliant payments in line with open banking regulations.

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TSYS to Acquire Cayan for $1.05 Billion

TSYS to Acquire Cayan for $1.05 Billion
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, TSYS

Payments service provider TSYS has boosted its portfolio this week. The Georgia-based company has agreed to acquire Cayan, a payment technology company, for $1.05 billion. TSYS expects the deal to modestly benefit its net revenue growth and adjusted earnings per share.

Cayan’s flagship platform, Genius, provides a scalable, unified commerce experience across channels. The company offers merchant acquiring services to 70,000+ companies and 100+ U.S.-based partners.

M. Troy Woods, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of TSYS, said that this acquisition “strategically complements” the goals TSYS has “to become a leading payment solutions provider to small and medium size businesses.” Woods continued, “The addition of Cayan’s unified commerce solutions puts us in a strong competitive position to jointly offer a broader set of value-add products and services to our partners and merchants.”

The acquisition has been approved by the TSYS Board of Directors and is expected to close in the first quarter of next year.

TSYS was founded in 1983 and has 11,500 employees across offices in 13 countries. Last year, the company processed 25.5 billion transactions, generating $4.2 billion in revenue. TSYS demoed its Spend Controls feature at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. Last week, the company extended its agreement with Capital One to continue providing processing services for the bank’s North American clients. This October, TSYS company expanded its ProPay merchant services to Australia and, earlier in the summer, teamed up with behavioral analytics company Featurespace to bolster its fraud prevention capabilities. TSYS is a publicly traded company (NYSE: TSS).

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Following J.P. Morgan Chase Acquisition, WePay to Power Payments for Volusion

Following J.P. Morgan Chase Acquisition, WePay to Power Payments for Volusion
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, WePay

Having finalized its acquisition of WePay today, JP Morgan Chase announced that it has already put the payments platform to work: powering commerce platform Volusion.

Since it was founded in 2009, WePay has been creating payment APIs and processing payments on behalf of small businesses. Earlier this fall, the company announced it would be acquired by J.P. Morgan Chase in a deal that was finalized today. While the terms of the deal were officially undisclosed, TechCrunch reported that Chase picked up WePay for $300 million (up to $400 million including retention bonuses and potential earn-outs).

Now that the acquisition is complete, WePay will continue to operate as a stand-alone entity and serve its 1,000 clients, including Freshbooks, Constant Contact, and GoFundMe. Under its new parent company, California-based WePay will continue to expand its client-base. The company’s CEO Bill Clerico will remain as head of the company, working alongside Chase Merchant Services CEO Matt Kane.

“We see exponential growth ahead of us as we combine our fintech products and culture with the global brand, scale, proficiencies, and distribution of Chase,” said Clerico. “We are headed into a massive expansion of our team, with particular focus on engineering and product management, and looking for a new headquarters in the Bay Area to accommodate our planned growth.”

As a part of this growth, WePay will power a new service from Volusion called Volusion Payments. The Austin-based ecommerce company serves 30,000 active SMB merchants with $28 billion in cumulative sales. In a statement, Kevin Sproles, Volusion’s founder and CEO, said that the new offering will allow Volusion to help its SMB clients “get up and running instantly, with next-day settlement, competitive rates, and all of their payment processing tightly integrated within the software they’ve already chosen for managing their online stores.”

WePay launched its Veda Risk API at FinovateSpring 2014. In 2015, the company was named to the Inc. 500 list as the 62nd fastest-growing private company in the U.S. In May 2016, WePay launched a white-label mobile card reader, and this March, WePay announced its merchant clients can now use Apple Pay and Google’s Android Pay.

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