Mergers & Acquisitions |

Arxan Acquires Apperian

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 13, 2017
Categories: Arxan Technologies, Mergers & Acquisitions

Application security company Arxan announced this week it has acquired Apperian. The mobile application management company will operate as a subsidiary of Arxan. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Apperian was founded in 2009 and has enabled 2.5 million enterprise app installations. In the past two years, the company has seen its user base grow 180%. Apperian executive Mark Lorion will become president and general manager of the new subsidiary. Lorion stated he is excited about the transition, since the companies share an “app-centric philosophy.”

In a press release Arxan CEO Joe Sander describes Apperian’s security capabilities as “pivotal for organizations to securely deploy and manage their apps.” Arxan launched in 2001 to prevent attacks and protect products for mobile, desktop, server and IoT.

Arxan is an alum of both Finovate and FinDEVr, having demoed at FinovateEurope 2014 where it debuted mobile application hardening technology that uses object code to lock down applications. The company also presented at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015 where CTO Sam Rehman presented on protecting apps and data from emerging risks. Arxan currently protects applications running on more than 500 million devices. Last month, the company closed out the year by winning a total of six IoT security awards.

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Kalixa Acquired By Singapore’s Senjō Group for $30 Million

By David Penn Posted on January 6, 2017
Categories: Kalixa, Mergers & Acquisitions

In a deal inked in the second half of December and slated to be completed in the first quarter of 2017, payments innovator Kalixa Group has been sold to Senjō Group, a private investment company based in Singapore. The price tag of the purchase is $30 million (€29 million), with a completion accounts adjustment that could take the final tally to as much as $37 million (€35.5 million).

In a statement, Kalixa said the acquisition gave the company the chance to “build a global footprint.” In addition, the statement read “it will give us the stability and long term support we need to further develop our platform and product portfolio for the benefit of our customers and partners.” Kalixa offers end-to-end payment services in verticals including financial services, e-commerce, gaming, and ticketing systems. Its solutions include Kalixa Pay, a prepaid digital wallet; Kalixa Pro, a small business mPOS; and Kalixa Accept, which enables merchants to accept more than 200 different payment methods. Following its acquisition of PXP Solutions in 2014, Kalixa became one of the top five payment services companies in the world.

With 19 payments, e-commerce, remittance, trading, and factoring companies in its portfolio, Senjō Group sees Kalixa as a good fit “with our strategy of building a global payments ecosystem,” in the words of Senjō Group COO Gavin Lock. “In return we will provide Kalixa, its employees and customers with the benefits of being a part of a global specialist payments operator.”

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Vienna, Austria, Kalixa demonstrated its mPOS technology at FinovateEurope 2013. In the fall of 2015, Kalixa was among a number of Finovate alums to make it to the finals of the U.K. Emerging Payments Awards. Earlier that year the company’s collaboration with Monitise, the social savings app called KiTTi, was launched by Santander UK.

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Akamai Acquires Cyberfend for Bot Detection

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on December 19, 2016
Categories: Akamai, Cyberfend, Mergers & Acquisitions

Web and mobile security company Akamai added to its expertise today after acquiring Cyberfend, a bot detection company. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Massachusetts-based Akamai, which went public on NASDAQ in 1999, aims to help banks and businesses protect their websites, mobile apps, and cloud environments. Akamai launched Bot Manager earlier this year to help thwart automated bots, which use stolen credentials to log into legitimate ecommerce and financial services websites.

Launched in 2014, California-based Cyberfend debuted BotFender, a cyber attack automation detection service, at FinovateSpring 2016. BotFender combines human cognitive science with machine learning algorithms to create a website security layer that is invisible to the end user and detects attacks in real time. Cyberfend is backed by Y-Combinator and protects 1 billion transactions every month.

Stuart Scholly, senior vice president and general manager of Web Security at Akamai, said, “The addition of Cyberfend’s technology is intended to give our customers a better way to spot and stop credential abuse on their sites—benefiting both the online business and its users.”

Cyberfend is Akamai’s third acquisition this year—after acquiring Concord Systems in September and Soha Systems in October—and its 16th acquisition since launching in 1998. As we reported earlier this year, Akamai is bolstering its security capabilities to become more appealing to potential, large acquirers, such as Google or Microsoft.

Akamai most recently presented at FinovateEurope 2015 in London where it debuted Client Reputation Service, designed to help FIs forecast security issues and protect against DDoS attacks, web attackers, screen scrapers, and scanning tools. The company is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Tom Leighton is CEO.

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Fiserv’s Newest Acquisition Deepens its Business Banking Capabilities

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on December 12, 2016
Categories: Fiserv, Mergers & Acquisitions

Financial services technology company Fiserv has agreed to acquire Online Banking Solutions, an Atlanta-based company that specializes in providing online business banking technology to U.S. commercial banks and credit unions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Online Banking Solutions cash-management platform offers a single user interface that enables cash management functionality for digital channels and acts as a secure gateway to access other bank-provided applications. Fiserv CEO Jeffery Yabuki anticipates the new capabilities garnered from the acquisition will help bank clients “provide greater value to their commercial customers through sophisticated cash-management solutions when and where they need them.”

The acquisition is subject to closing conditions and is expected to be finalized before the end of 2016.

At FinovateFall 2016 the company showed off its Mobiliti Enterprise solution that integrates traditional loan applications with a bank. In September, Fiserv marked 30 years of service as a publicly traded company, celebrating the occasion by ringing the opening bell on Nasdaq. Most recently, the company updated its Unified Wealth Platform to allow advisers to access client account management tools more conveniently. Fiserv is headquartered in Wisconsin and was founded in 1984.

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Klarna Acqui-hires P2P Payment Company Cookies

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on November 22, 2016
Categories: Klarna, Mergers & Acquisitions

Online payment solutions company Klarna made a move to bolster the brain power of its team today. The company has acquired Germany-based Cookies, a P2P payments startup that filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Cookies was founded by former N26 employees Garry Krugljakow and Lamine Cheloufi who launched the startup in an effort to become the Venmo of Europe. For Klarna, the acquisition is about talent and not about Cookies’ money-transfer technology. The entire Cookies team, except for cofounder Krugljakow, will join Klarna and remain in Germany to become Klarna’s new Berlin office.

In August, we covered Cookies’ effort to change its business model into a messaging-based P2P payment service geared toward millennials. The messaging service included paymojis, emojis with special powers (such as a lightning bolt to make the payment send faster) that could be included alongside the payment. Regarding the transition, Cookies co-founder Cheloufi said, “I am thrilled to become part of Klarna together with our strong team and take on new innovative projects out of Berlin. For us, this is a unique chance to join Klarna and benefit from their wealth of expertise, tech and talent.”

Founded in 2005 in Stockholm, Klarna is headquartered in Ohio with offices in San Francisco, New York, Tel Aviv, and across Europe. The company demonstrated its online payment-processing service at FinovateSpring 2012. Recently, Klarna went live with SAP’s Smart Accounting for Financial Instruments—Smart AFI—a solution that offers a centralized sub-ledger that integrates directly into a company’s accounting-documentation chain. In September, the company added American Express as a payment option at checkout.

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Ahead of Anticipated IPO, ayondo Acquires TradeHero

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on November 15, 2016
Categories: ayondo, Mergers & Acquisitions, TradeHero

Brokerage and social trading platform ayondo has acquired the TradeHero brand. Singapore-based TradeHero offers a mobile-only social trading app that competes with ayondo’s web-based brokerage platform.

The deal expands Germany-based ayondo’s footprint in Singapore and offers it access to TradeHero’s stock-market-simulation app that has been ranked the #1 finance app in the Apple app store in 90+ countries. It is expected to bolster ayondo’s 220,000 users from 195 countries.

The acquisition is strategic for ayondo and part of a string of expansion efforts. In a press release, ayondo CEO Robert Lempka said, “For ayondo, mobile technology is a big part of the Group’s strategy for expansion and growth. The TradeHero brand is extremely well established in Asia and was the missing piece in our product range.” Today’s news comes almost a year after ayondo partnered with KGI Fraser Securities to launch KGI Contrax, a platform for investors to trade Contracts for Difference.

Regarding the transition, TradeHero co-founder Dominic Morris, who will now serve as the head of innovation for ayondo Group, said, “ayondo and TradeHero share the same vision; that is, to democratise the world of investing through easy-to-use, disruptive technology and knowledge sharing.”

ayondo began its expansion into Singapore in 2014 after securing $4 million in funding from Lumnior Capital. Most recently, the company announced a $117 million reverse takeover agreement with Starland Holdings, a Singapore-based property developer. The deal, which has yet to be finalized, will mark ayondo as the first fintech company to IPO on the Singapore Exchange (SGX).

TradeHero debuted its app at FinovateAsia 2012 in Singapore. Prior to today’s acquisition, the company had raised a total of $10.5 million. ayondo most recently debuted the newest version of its platform at FinovateEurope 2013.

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Strategic Insight Buys BrightScope for Reported $35+ Million

By David Penn Posted on November 2, 2016
Categories: BrightScope, Mergers & Acquisitions

Financial information and technology company BrightScope, one of our earliest alums, has been acquired by data and business intelligence provider, Strategic Insight. Terms of the deal were not immediately available. But RIABiz reports that the acquisition was financed by Genstar Capital and notes “outside sources peg the deal at $35 to $40 million.” Commenting on the news, Strategic Insight CEO Joel Mandelbaum said, “BrightScope is well known for its unique retirement data and its technology innovation. We are excited by the opportunity to add retirement data to our portfolio and accelerate our commitment to the asset-management industry.”

The acquisition comes in the wake of a pair of other recent pickups for Strategic Insight, Market Metrics and Matrix Solutions. Both deals were designed to add to the company’s access to investment data and to be able to get that data to its clients efficiently and quickly. Interestingly, BrightScope’s attempt to acquire Market Metrics earlier this year was thwarted by Strategic Insight’s parent company, Asset International, which picked up the company for $165 million.

In addition to its four divisions—SI Data, SI Research, SI Intelligence, and SI Interactive—Strategic Insight produces a set of investment/asset management-related publications including, PLANSPONSOR, PLANADVISER, Chief Investment Officer, Global Custodian, and The Trade. Strategic Insight was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Boston, San Francisco, Samford, Connecticut, as well as around the world, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada. The firm has more than 250 U.S. FIs as clients including Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, Nomura, TIAA-CREF, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

BrightScope co-founder Mike Alfred noted that the acquisition comes at a time of “tremendous change” in the financial services business, and said working with Strategic Insight “will give us the platform and products to meet the evolving needs of our customers.” This point was echoed by RIABiz, which noted in its reporting that changing investment styles and new regulations are forcing many asset-management-related firms to re-evaluate the way they do business. “We see all the changes coming, like the move to passive investing and the new DOL rules,” Alfred told RIABiz. “We knew we had to get bigger or not be in the business,” he said.

Founded in 2008 by brothers Mike and Ryan Alfred, and headquartered in San Diego, California, BrightScope demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2009. Prior to its acquisition by Strategic Insight, the company had raised $6 million in funding from investors including Steelpoint Capital Partners.

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Akamai Acquires Soha Systems

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 5, 2016
Categories: Akamai, Mergers & Acquisitions

With security emerging as one of the largest themes of our upcoming FinDEVr developers conference, it’s no surprise to see movement in that segment of the industry. Yesterday, cloud services provider Akamai acquired security company Soha Systems.

While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Akamai describes the purchase price as “immaterial” for the company. California-based Soha, which offers secure access-as-a-service for enterprises, has raised almost $10 million since it was founded in 2013. Under the acquisition, Akamai will use Soha’s services to extend its portfolio of Cloud Networking Solutions and to “simplify and improve remote and mobile access to enterprise resources, while at the same time minimize the exposed attack surface.” In a press release, Robert Blumofe, EVP, Platform, and GM, Enterprise and Carrier Division, said, “By adding Soha’s secure access technology to our cloud networking solutions, we believe we are well positioned to help our customers take full advantage of the key trends, cloud and mobile, driving enterprise computing.”

The deal comes less than a week after the company’s announcement of its acquisition of Concord Systems, an IoT company. In fact, Akamai has been on an acquisition spree of security companies; recent deals include Bloxx in November 2015 and Prolexic in 2013. According to TechCrunch, Akamai is bolstering its security to become more appealing to potential, large acquirers, such as Google or Microsoft.

Akamai presented at FinovateEurope 2015 in London where it debuted its Client Reputation Service, designed to help FIs forecast security issues and protect against DDoS attacks, web attackers, screen scrapers, and scanning tools. The company most recently released the Akamai Bot Manager to mitigate screen scraping, automated clicks, and illegitimate transactional activity.

Akamai was founded in 1998 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Tom Leighton is CEO.

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Ant Financial Acquires EyeVerify

By David Penn Posted on September 13, 2016
Categories: EyeVerify, Mergers & Acquisitions

Less than a week after EyeVerify’s successful return to the Finovate stage, the company announced that it has been acquired by Ant Financial. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but EyeVerify will remain in operation as a wholly owned subsidiary of Ant Financial Services and will remain headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri.

EyeVerify founder and CEO Toby Rush said Ant Financial’s vision to support small and micro enterprises and their consumers “resonate(d) deeply” with the core mission of EyeVerify. Rush notes that EyeVerify’s payment-grade biometric platform is already trusted by more than three dozen banks and technology leaders, and says, “We look forward to helping even more people across the financial spectrum access digital services with security and convenience.”

EyeVerify’s Director of Marketing Tinna Hung demonstrated EyePrint ID at FinovateEurope 2016.

EyeVerify’s innovation is to use the pattern of veins and white space in the human eye as a biometric marker, an identifier more unique than fingerprints according to the company. Using the camera embedded in most smartphones, EyeVerify users can take an “eyeprint” as easily as they would take a selfie and use that spoof-proof eyeprint for authentication purposes. The software-based technology, deployed by Wells Fargo for its corporate clients with commercial banks this spring, doesn’t require expensive hardware and has an accuracy rate of 99.99%.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, EyeVerify demonstrated its Eyeprint ID at FinovateEurope in spring 2016, where the company won Best of Show. More recently, EyeVerify demoed its technology here in the U.S. at FinovateFall 2016 (demo video available soon). Last month, EyeVerify integrated its Eyeprint ID technology into the Identity Platform of fellow Finovate alum, BioConnect.

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Blackhawk Network Acquires Grass Roots for $118 Million

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on September 2, 2016
Categories: Blackhawk Network, Mergers & Acquisitions

Prepaid payments network Blackhawk Network scored big yesterday. The California-based company has agreed to acquire Grass Roots, an employee- and customer-engagement solutions company, for $118 million.

This is the company’s eighth acquisition and is expected to help Blackhawk broaden the incentives-and-engagement business it launched in 2014 called Blackhawk Engagement Solutions (BES). BES took shape after Blackhawk acquired incentives-and-rewards companies Parago, InteliSpend, Cardlab, and Incentec. Since then, Blackhawk has bolstered BES by acquiring Achievers, Giftcards.com, and Extrameasures.

Bill Tauscher, executive chairman for Blackhawk, said the acquisition “complements the existing client portfolio” of Blackhawk. Tausher says the company “will also offer new products and capabilities to Grass Roots’ clients.”

While the company has commercial operations in 25+ countries, this acquisition will expand Blackhawk’s geographical reach. U.K.-based Grass Roots has offices in Europe, the Americas, and Asia and will operate as a subsidiary of Blackhawk. The finalization of the transaction is subject to approval by Germany’s Federal Cartel Office.

Founded in 2001, Blackhawk went public in 2013 (NASDAQ: HAWK) and is one of 49 companies listed on the KBW Nasdaq Financial Technology Index. In July 2016, the company launched an ecommerce website for gift cards in Canada, and at FinovateFall 2012, Blackhawk debuted GoWallet, a direct-to-consumer platform that lets users manage all of their gift cards from a central dashboard. In February 2016, the company appointed Talbott Roche as CEO.

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Ping Identity Acquires UnboundID

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on August 2, 2016
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Ping Identity

Identity security solutions provider Ping Identity has acquired UnboundID, its former partner, for an undisclosed amount. Austin-based UnboundID offers customer identity and access management solutions. The deal is expected to help Ping expand from identity management into customer engagement.

This comes two months after Colorado-based Ping Identity was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $600 million. That acquisition, Ping noted, provided the resources it needed to accelerate its platform by purchasing UnboundID, a move that “wouldn’t have been possible” prior to being acquired by Vista Equity Partners.

Today’s acquisition gives Ping access to UnboundID’s “impressive list of big enterprise customers,” including global brands such as Chick-fil-A, Wells Fargo, Target, Boeing, Cisco and NBC. Perhaps more importantly, it also gives Ping its own identity-data store. In an interview with TechCrunch, Ping Identity CEO Andre Durand said, “At the end of the day, UnboundID has one of the world’s best customer-facing user directories.” Durand added, “Once we incorporate this into our platform and have capabilities to store user profiles, it allows us to innovate in ways we couldn’t before.”

Additionally, Ping anticipates Unbound will help it accelerate its “directory- and user-management capabilities by providing customer identity and access management across all channels and devices.”

Specifically, Ping mentions that the addition of Unbound’s capability will bolster:

User experience
Personalization
Privacy management
Partner-identity management

Unbound was founded in 2007; its employees, including CEO Stephen Shoaff, will join the Ping Identity team.

Founded in 2003, Ping Identity upgraded its Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) platform to improve security and ease of use for end users. At FinovateEurope 2012, the company showed how banks can increase conversion rates and reuse existing infrastructure by implementing social networking logins. Prior to being acquired in June 2016, Ping had raised a total of $128 million in funding and counts Draper Fisher Jurvetson, General Catalyst Partners, and Silicon Valley Bank among its investors.

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France’s Groupe BPCE Acquires Munich-based Fidor Bank

By David Penn Posted on July 28, 2016
Categories: Fidor Bank, Mergers & Acquisitions

Digital banking pioneer Fidor Bank has been acquired by Groupe BPCE of France; terms were not disclosed. Fidor Bank founder and CEO Matthias Kröner will remain with the company.

Quoted in the Financial Times, BPCE chairman François Perol said the acquisition “demonstrates our commitment to innovation, to developing a customer-centric approach enabled by digital banking technology, and to be more involved in the digital and mobile banking field.” Kröner, whose bank expanded to the U.K. last fall, added that the acquisition will accelerate Fidor’s international expansion “and drive the development of our innovative digital technology even further.”

Fidor Bank Chief Innovation Officer Patrick Gruban during his presentation at FinDEVr 2016 New York.

Munich-based Fidor Bank was founded in 2009, and has 350,000 members and 120,000 customers in Germany and the U.K. The bank garnered a reputation for leadership in digital banking, partnering with Currency Cloud last fall to support SEPA Direct Debit functionality, and being the first bank to deploy the Ripple protocol for cross-border transfers in 2014, as well as making inroads into social media, P2P lending, and crowdfunding. The bank participated in FinDEVr 2016 New York this spring where Chief Innovation Officer Patrick Gruban presented “How to Start Your Digital bank—Mobile Apps and APIs Included.”

Earlier this month in Wired magazine, Fidor was profiled as “the fintech bank run by its customers.” The bank announced new offices in Dubai last month and in May, Fidor reported that its technology would be used to help launch the new O2 mobile bank account. The bank was inaugurated into The FinTech50 for 2016 in April.

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