Mergers & Acquisitions

JPMorgan Chase Acquires WePay

JPMorgan Chase Acquires WePay
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, WePay

JPMorgan Chase has demonstrated a number of different ways for banks and other FIs to keep up with the competition: investment, in the form of its capital infusion into Bill.com,  partnership, as in the recently extended deal with OnDeck, and outright acquisition, as in today’s case of WePay.

The bank has agreed to acquire the Palo Alto, California-based fintech, which will function as the payments innovation incubator in Silicon Valley for JPMorgan Chase. The terms of the acquisition were not immediately available, but the Wall Street Journal suggests the WePay price tag is just above the company’s most recently established valuation of $220 million.

“With WePay, Chase is taking the work out of payments for both our business clients and the software providers who serve them,” Chase Merchant Services CEO Matt Kane said. “We are powering payments for growth, so businesses can accept payments instantly, get paid faster, and never lose a sale.” Kane added that ISVs will get a “payment facilitator-like experience” with less cost and fraud risk. WePay founder and CEO Bill Clerico said the acquisition would enable the company “to better support (its) growing list of platform partners and the businesses they serve.”

The two companies have set out distinct areas where the merger will provide new opportunities to software providers and merchants. These include instant onboarding for small businesses, instant payments for merchants, and the ability for software platforms to serve as payment facilitators or third party payment processors.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, WePay demonstrated its Veda Risk Engine/Risk API at FinovateSpring 2014. The company’s API-based technology gives simple payment functionality to software platforms like Constant Contact and GoFundMe. Payment integration can be a significant challenge for many software providers; in a statement JPMorgan noted that software-enabled payments are growing at 4x the industry average.

Earlier this month, WePay announced a partnership with SignUpGenius. Over the summer, the company released new national research that showed 41% of businesses suffered from cash flow challenges and 16% experienced payment fraud in the past year. The research also revealed high adoption of business management software tools or apps among SMBs (84%) and a high preference for faster service from their technology (50%) and improved security (45%). In March, WePay began accepting Apple Pay and Android Pay online.

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Mitek Acquires ICAR for $15 Million

Mitek Acquires ICAR for $15 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Mitek

Mobile capture and identity solutions company Mitek Systems scored a win for its identity verification arm this week. The company has acquired Barcelona-based ICAR for $15 million (€12.75 million).

In addition to strengthening Mitek’s position in the consumer identity and access management market, the move is expected to bolster the company’s stance overall in the industry. The acquisition will enable Mitek to offer extensive identity document coverage in North America, Europe, and Latin America and will increase Mitek’s capabilities with several new factors of authentication. Additionally, Mitek can now enable customer onboarding and authentication on both web and mobile interfaces.

“The technical and cultural fit between ICAR and Mitek is a tremendous opportunity to maximize value for shareholders, while expanding our mission to bring the highest quality user experience and digital identity verification solutions to our customers globally,” said James B. DeBello, Chief Executive Officer of Mitek and Chairman of the Mitek Board of Directors.

ICAR was founded in 2002 and facilitates more than 20 million identity validations per year. The company is headquartered in Barcelona with offices in Madrid, São Paulo, and Mexico City. ICAR is a spin-off of Computer Vision Center of the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona which, combined with researchers from Mitek Labs, will boost Mitek’s expertise in how machine learning and computer vision enhance digital identity verification.

At FinovateEurope 2017, ICAR’s CEO Xavier Codó and CMO Mariona Campmany demonstrated the company’s IDMobile solution that analyzes factors such as the consumer’s geolocation, email address, social networks and compares them with the user’s selfie and ID photo. Check out an interview we conducted with Campmany earlier this year.

Mitek recently demoed its MobileVerify solution at FinovateFall 2017. The company is publicly traded on NASDAQ under the ticker “MITK”. Mitek was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in San Diego, California. Last month, the company began leveraging near field communication (NFC) technology to add another factor of authentication by reading data held on RFID chips embedded into documents.

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Aviva Acquires Majority Stake in U.K. Online Wealth Management Specialist, Wealthify

Aviva Acquires Majority Stake in U.K. Online Wealth Management Specialist, Wealthify
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Wealthify

U.K.-based insurer Aviva is the latest financial services company to turn to fintech in general and online investment services in specific in order to provide greater value for its customers. The firm announced today that it had acquired a majority stake in robo advisor, Wealthify. And while terms were not disclosed, the company was valued at £9.7 million in the wake of recent £1 million crowdfunding campaign.

Writing at the Wealthify blog, company CEO and founder Richard Theo called the acquisition “a huge vote of confidence” in both Wealthify’s vision to make investing more democratic, as well as, “the way we have delivered that vision.” Theo said the move affirmed the company’s place as a significant disruptor in the wealth management space, and takes Aviva closer to being a “one-stop-shop for all their customers’ insurance, pension, and investment needs.”

Left to right: Wealthify founder and CEO Richard Theo and Chief Investment Officer Michelle Pearce demonstrating the company’s online investing service.

Theo added that the investment will enable the company to pursue its “ambitious customer acquisition targets” as well as support new products, particularly JISA and SIPPs. Wealthify also plans to add talent to its team, and will take on a trio of non-executive directors from Aviva. The company will remain headquartered in Cardiff, Theo noted with pride, referencing both Wealthify’s Welsh roots and the promise of the growing financial services community in and around Cardiff.

Managing director of Aviva U.K. Digital Blair Turnbull praised Wealthify’s platform, which will be integrated into Aviva’s digital hub, MyAviva. Turnbull called the technology “remarkably easy to use” and underscored its appeal to both traditional cash savers and millennial investors. Aviva is the biggest general insurance provider in the U.K., and a leading life and pensions provider. The firm serves 33 million customers in 16 markets around the world.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Cardiff, U.K., Wealthify demonstrated its platform at FinovateEurope 2017. With as little as £ 1, users can use the platform to save for specific financial goals, create a monthly investment installment plan, set an investment time horizon, and articulate a personalize risk profile – all of which guide the way the platform chooses potential investments. The platform gives users a “predicted value” of their portfolio and the ability to see the actual plan summary of asset class allocations, fees, and more. Wealthify has more than 1,800 registered users.

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TIBCO Acquires Cisco’s Data Virtualization Business

TIBCO Acquires Cisco’s Data Virtualization Business
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, TIBCO Software

Integration, analytics, and event-processing software company TIBCO has agreed to acquire Cisco’s Data Virtualization business (formerly Composite Software). Today’s acquisition, which is subject to conditions, is expected to close in a few weeks.

The solution powers enterprise-scale data virtualization and offers associated consulting and support services. TIBCO will leverage the new solution to enhance its portfolio of analytics products and will help clients onboard analytics solutions faster than competing products. Additionally, it will help TIBCO adapt to a range of data sources — from traditional,  IoT-sourced, to big data. The new technology creates a virtual layer of data (without the need for extracting) and leaves the original data sources in tact.

“Data Virtualization helps our customers find and analyze the data they need in hours or days, rather than months, so that they can quickly discover insights and take insight-driven action,” said Mark Palmer, senior vice president of analytics at TIBCO. “The next generation of business intelligence depends on doing more with analytics than just putting data on a graph. Data Virtualization is a key component of getting the right data at the right time to business analysts, data scientists, and automated applications using streaming analytics.”

This is the California-based company’s third acquisition this year, after announcing plans to acquire both nanoscale.io for its microservices in July, and data science company Statistica in May. Last month, TIBCO received a number of accolades, having been named a leader by Dresner Advisory Services, and Forrester, and ranking first in Dresner Advisory Services 2017 Advanced and Predictive Analytics Market Study.

TIBCO presented at FinovateAsia 2013, showcasing how banks can leverage their clients’ transactional data to gain insight into customer behavior. Founded in 1997, TIBCO was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2014.

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Luxoft Acquires UNAFORTIS to Broaden Client Base within Financial Services

Luxoft Acquires UNAFORTIS to Broaden Client Base within Financial Services
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Luxoft, Mergers & Acquisitions

Software development services company Luxoft has bolstered its skillset recently. The Switzerland-based firm announced last week it acquired fellow Swiss company UNAFORTIS, a wealth management consultancy.

UNAFORTIS is a leading implementation provider of Avaloq, a popular software package that offers fully integrated banking software for the back, middle, and front office. This addition is expected to deepen Luxoft’s proficiency in standardized software as well as broaden the client base for the company’s financial services arm, DXC Luxoft. Luxoft aims to add clients within the wealth management, private, and universal banking sectors across the globe.

In fact, the company plans to build a team of 150 to 200 engineers to better combine its existing DXC Luxoft product, as well as recently-acquired derivIT, into its core capabilities offered across the globe. “We are looking forward to UNAFORTIS joining our growing Luxoft team. It is a strategically important acquisition, helping us diversify financial services business outside of our core investment banking and capital markets presence,” said Dmitry Loschinin, President and CEO of Luxoft. “Its client base complements our own, creating mid-term cross-selling opportunities that can be scaled significantly through our delivery network,” he said. “This will add another valuable premium services layer to our core application development and maintenance offering.”

Founded in 2000, Luxoft is a publicly-traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE:LXFT). Last month, the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals recognized the company as a “world leading” IT service provider for the sixth year in a row and in August, Luxoft expanded its geographical presence by opening a distribution office in Russia and expanding its offices in Germany. At FinovateFall 2014, the company debuted Horizon, a visualization framework.

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Blackhawk Network Acquires CashStar in $175 Million Deal

Blackhawk Network Acquires CashStar in $175 Million Deal
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Blackhawk Network, CashStar, Mergers & Acquisitions

With Blackhawk Networks’ $175 million acquisition of fellow Finovate alum CashStar, we may soon learn just how good digital gifting is going to get.

Talbott Roche, CEO and president of Blackhawk Network, said the deal “strategically enhances Blackhawk’s ability to provide the right digital solutions to our partners to meet the changing needs of business customers and consumers.” She added that the acquisition made Blackhawk “a leading provider in the fast growing, first-party digital (gift card) market.” CEO and president of CashStar Ben Kaplan added that the combination of CashStar’s platform and Blackhawk’s “product breadth and global reach” would deliver “more powerful capabilities and new revenue opportunities for our clients and partners.” The acquisition will make CashStar a part of Blackhawk’s digital and incentives business, with Kaplan remaining on board to manage the business.

The acquisition is an all-cash deal which Blackhawk CFO Jerry Ulrich said would be “at least earnings neutral in fiscal 2017 and meaningfully accretive after synergies in 2018.” Ulrich also anticipates the acquisition will “generate positive cash flow in 2018” as well as boost topline growth.

CashStar’s platform gives retailers the ability to market, sell, and distribute both plastic and digital gift cards. The company offers a Commerce platform for merchants and an Exchange platform for gift card distributors and loyalty program managers. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Portland, Maine, CashStar demonstrated its Digital Gifting and Incentives platform at FinovateFall 2011. The company added real-time card activation, security improvements, and streamlined ordering in its last platform upgrade in July, and in May, CashStar’s Velocity B2B division helped global prestige retailer Sephora to introduce a B2B gift card program.

This spring, the company partnered with discount gift card marketplace Raise in a deal that will give the Chicago-based startup access to more than 250 merchants and 40 payment processors. CashStar had raised $44 million in funding previous to this week’s acquisition, most recently completing a $15 million Series D in 2015. The company’s customers include Starbucks, The Home Depot, and Uber.

Headquartered in Pleasanton, California, Blackhawk Network demonstrated its GoWallet solution at FinovateFall 2012. Last month, the company partnered with fellow Finovate alum PayNearMe, giving the cash transaction network access to Blackhawk’s retail partners. In May, the San Francisco Business Times recognized Blackhawk’s Roche with its Inspire Award as part of its annual “Most Influential Women in Business” initiative. Also honored by the Times was the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, Teri Llach. Blackhawk Network trades on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker “HAWK” and has a market capitalization of $2.5 billion.

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Accenture Acquires Verax to Boost Canadian Operations

Accenture Acquires Verax to Boost Canadian Operations
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Accenture, Mergers & Acquisitions

Consulting and technology services company Accenture acquired VERAX solutions last week. Terms of the deal with the Toronto-based company were not disclosed.

The acquisition is expected to enhance Accenture’s business services in Canada. Specifically, VERAX will bring its IT consulting initiatives across wealth management, brokerage and mutual funds, mobile and online banking, retail and commercial banking, and insurance and capital markets for a range of financial institutions.

Robert Vokes, managing director of Accenture’s Financial Services practice in Canada, said VERAX consultants will “greatly complement and enhance the breadth and depth of our financial services capabilities in Canada.” Vokes continued by saying that the merger will help clients “to react even more quickly and with even more confidence.”

Founded in 1951, Accenture serves clients in more than 120 countries across 40 industries. The company has made 15 consecutive appearances in Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies list and has 5,000 patents and patents pending in 44 countries.

At FinovateFall 2013, Accenture joined mBank on stage to showcase the Bank 3.0 revolution. The redesigned bank platform offers a modern user interface and user experience coupled with video banking, social channels, and gamification. Recently, Accenture launched a Fintech 71 accelerator program in Ohio, and formed a partnership with Apple to launch iOS-based business solutions.

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LendingRobot and NSR Invest to Form Biggest Robo Advisor in Marketplace Lending

LendingRobot and NSR Invest to Form Biggest Robo Advisor in Marketplace Lending
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: LendingRobot, Mergers & Acquisitions

P2P lending robo advisor LendingRobot will join NSR Invest, creating what the company called in a statement “the largest independent robo advisor in the alternative lending space.” LendingRobot explained in its blog that the “websites, operating, and trading systems” of each platform will continue to function as usual for the time being as the companies prepare to combine the two businesses. Formally, the acquisition involves Lend Core, the parent company of NSR Invest, acquiring Algorithmic Inc. and its assets, which include LendingRobot.

The new entity is expected to bring a variety of new innovations to the P2P alternative lending space, and LendingRobot pointed to its Lending Robot Series Fund, as an example of the types of products customers will see more of in the future. As reported in LendAcademy, the combined company will have more than 8,000 clients and $150 million in assets under management. NSR Invest co-founder and CEO Bo Brustkern will serve as CEO, with LendingRobot CEO and co-founder Emmanuel Marot remaining as a special advisor.

“We have long respected the work of the LendingRobot team and recognize that our companies are pursuing a common goal,” Brustkern explained. He added that the combination of the two companies will deliver “enhanced capabilities to our combined client bases today, and big plans for the future.” Marot highlighted the fact that the two companies had “taken different tracts to provide similar services” and that the time had come to marry “complimentary strengths.”

LendingRobot provides investors with the opportunity to invest in P2P loans as an asset class. The company’s platform uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to spot loans with risk and return profiles that suit individual investor preferences. LendingRobot automates loan selection to ensure that investor portfolios remain diversified and can be configured to continually-invest sidelined cash. Alternative lending platforms accessible through LendingRobot include fellow Finovate alums, Lending Club and Prosper.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, LendingRobot demonstrated its LendingRobot Dashboard at FinovateSpring 2016. Prior to its acquisition by NSR Invest, the company had raised $3 million in funding from investors including Runa Capital and Club Italia Investimenti.

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Vipera Acquires SoftTelecom for $1.5 Million

Vipera Acquires SoftTelecom for $1.5 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Vipera

Mobile financial services company Vipera announced today it is acquiring SoftTelecom. The deal is expected to close for $1.5 million (€1.3 million).

Madrid-based SoftTelecom is a fintech and telecom software solutions company focused on open source technologies, including PSD2 and blockchain development projects. The company has 18 employees who serve clients in Madrid, the Netherlands, and the U.K. In 2016, SoftTelecom had an operating profit of $289,000 (€247,000) and recorded net assets of $856,000 (€734,000).

Vipera’s primary goal with the acquisition is to bolster product development. Specifically, the company sees SoftTelecom as a “launchpad for expanding Group sales into the Spanish market with a local delivery capability in the Iberian region. “London-based Vipera offers its MOTIF platform to clients in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. MOTIF is comprised of three personal banking products: Mobile Banking, Mobile Payments, and Mobile Card Control.

Simon Pearce (Chief Commercial Officer) and Andrea Gambirasio (Head of Sales Support) demo Vipera’s MOTIF at FinovateEurope 2016 in London

At FinovateEurope 2016, Vipera demonstrated how MOTIF can 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. In the demo, the company’s Chief Commercial Officer Simon Pearce explained how the real-time contextual offers engine “can be used by banks and merchants to deliver appropriate offers right into the handset of the user with a reward or offer appropriate to them at the right time, but most importantly, in the right place.”

Vipera also announced today that Sella Bank Group has subscribed $2.9 million (€2.5 million) for 40 million shares in Vipera at a price of just over 7 cents per share. Last month, the company partnered with core banking provider Mambu and in April it won its largest contract to-date, worth $2.4 million in revenue.

Vipera was founded in 2005. Marco Casartelli is CEO.

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Worldline Buys First Data Baltics for $85 Million

Worldline Buys First Data Baltics for $85 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: First Data, Mergers & Acquisitions, Worldline

European payments and transactional service provider Worldline has agreed to acquire First Data Baltics, the leading payment processor in the region, for $85 million (73 million euros). The deal is slated to be finalized in the third quarter of this year.

Worldline’s acquisition of the 200-person First Data Baltics branch helps the France-based company break into the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian markets. Gilles Grapinet, Worldline CEO said that the deal is a “significant development” that will “accelerate the execution of our pan-European consolidation strategy in financial processing services.” Grapinet added, “In one transaction, we gain a leading position in the fast-developing countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, we reinforce our group capabilities in the north of Europe and will establish new relationships with numerous prestigious Baltic and Nordic banks.”

This marks the company’s second acquisition this year, after it acquired Digital River World Payments earlier this month. Worldline anticipates these acquisitions are the first of many for the company. Grapinet said that the company sees, “an unprecedented level of M&A opportunities in the payment space, notably in Europe.”

Founded in 1973, Worldline showcased a connected piggy bank. The IoT device pairs with a companion mobile app on a child’s phone to serve as a physical savings account for the kid. The app helps the child recognize and count their coins, while the parent-facing side of the app enables parents to deposit money into the child’s online account using NFC.

Worldline went public in 2014 and Earlier this week the company and Total partnered with InTouch to deploy Guichet Unique, a digital solution for retail networks. Worldline has ranked as a Market Leader in the Ovum Decision Matrix for its white label mobile wallet solution and was recently awarded Best Chile 2017 for its commitment to the well-being of its collaborators.

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Urban FT Acquires iParse

Urban FT Acquires iParse
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Urban FT

B2B digital banking platform Urban FT acquired Oregon-based iParse today. Urban FT plans to leverage iParse’s technology and its mobile banking-related patents.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Operations will continue as usual for iParse, which will function as a separate division from Urban FT. All staff (except for the founders, who are retiring) will continue as employees of Urban FT’s new unit. The company’s CEO, Richard Steggall, is calling the new deployment a “mobile banking plug-in solution” because it empowers financial institutions of any size to compete in the mobile banking space by plugging directly into their core, simulating integration. Urban FT estimates the mobile plug-in option will be available to clients within the next couple of months.

In the press release, Steggall said:

“The iParse tech strategically complements Urban FT’s suite of white-label mobile banking solutions by providing a proprietary way to bypass core processor integration, while delivering a robust mobile banking service for financial institutions to offer to their customers…. now credit unions and banks of any size can play—and play competitively—in the mobile banking space.”

Founded in 2013, Urban FT expects the number of bank clients it serves to double to more than 150 within the next year. Kasey Kaplan, Urban FT President said, “On the bank side, we size the market at approximately 12,500 potential targets, and we know that almost 42 percent of credit unions have yet to launch any form of mobile banking.”

At FinovateFall 2016, Urban FT debuted the Workshop, a real-time mobile app management platform that enables banks to quickly configure, brand, and launch mobile banking apps without coding. The company has 40 employees and, in addition to financial institutions, also serves clients in telecommunications, insurance, and travel. Among the New York-based company’s partners are Sprint, Boost Mobile, Yelp, Banc of California, and Sunrise Banks.

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Nostrum Group Acquired by Equiniti Group

Nostrum Group Acquired by Equiniti Group
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Nostrum Group

Just a few days after Vantiv and Worldpay made merger and acquisitions headlines in the payments world, here come Equiniti and Nostrum Group with some M&A news of their own in the lending space. Announced today, Equiniti has agreed to acquire Nostrum Group in a deal that will boost Equiniti’s ability to provide technology-enabled lending solutions. Equiniti CEO Guy Wakeley said “The integration of Nostrum will provide greater depth, scale and capability in a dynamic growth market, whilst also providing the platform for a range of new products and services.”

Calling the acquisition “the next chapter in the development of our businesses,” Nostrum Group CEO Richard Carter described the combined entity as a blend of “Equiniti’s rich feature set and Nostrum’s agility.” Carter will stay on as Managing Director of the newly-formed Equiniti Credit Services brand.

Pictured: Nostrum Group CEO Richard Carter demonstrating the company’s Digital Lending Platform at FinovateEurope 2016.

Nostrum Group specializes in automated digital loan management software for banks and finance companies. The company’s technology provides solutions for every step of the process from originations (including application capture, processing, documentation, underwriting, and completion), servicing (including payment processing, document management, and reporting), and collections (including profiling and segmentation; payment and arrangements; work prioritization and automation; and third party management). More than focusing on acquiring new customers, Nostrum Group also offers tools lenders can use to retain their existing customers, as well. As Carter explained from the Finovate stage last year, Nostrum Group offers lenders the technology “to facilitate the production of appropriate offers that are tailored to those customers and then delivered to them.”

Headquartered in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, U.K. and founded in 2001, Nostrum Gr0up demonstrated its Digital Lending Platform at FinovateEurope 2016. Later that year, the company’s CTO Alex Stephen, Head of PMO Tom Martin, and Head of Software Development Simon Quin presented the “Nostrum Loan Engine API” at our developer’s conference in New York. This year, CEO Carter was named to the Maserati 100, a roster of top British entrepreneurs from high-end carmaker, Maserati, and The Sunday Times.

Technology services provider Equiniti was founded in 2009. Many of the largest pension schemes in the U.K., and 70% of the FTSE 100, use Equiniti services to manage share registration and related investors services. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol, “EQN,” and has a market capitalization of £750 million ($972 million).

 

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