Mergers & Acquisitions Archives - Page 31 of 34

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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Blockstream Acquires Bitcoin Wallet Solution GreenAddress

By David Penn Posted on July 28, 2016
Categories: Green Address IT, Mergers & Acquisitions

Terms have not been disclosed, but today we learned that Blockstream has agreed to acquire bitcoin wallet software maker and FinDEVr alum, GreenAddress.

Adam Back, Blockstream president, called GreenAddress a company with a “demonstrated track record of delivering an industry-leading product that prioritizes security, privacy, and convenience.” Back said the acquisition was key to Blockstream’s goal of building out its sidechain technology roadmap. “The addition of an open source, well-tested production quality wallet was a natural choice,” Back said. “It increases the reach of our platform and allows us to meet the requirements of our enterprise applications.”

GreenAddress founder and CEO Lawrence Nahum during his presentation, “GreenAddress: Instant and Secure Bitcoin” at FinDEVr 2014 in San Francisco.

Writing at the GreenAddress blog, company founder and CEO Lawrence Nahum thanked those who have been using GreenAddress’s bitcoin wallet and ensured that GreenAddress wallets will continue to work (“Your funds are safe by design,” Nahum wrote). He listed a number of upcoming improvements to the technology, including a multiplatform wallet library, better privacy and security, as well as sidechain support. This last enhancement will enable GreenAddress wallet holders to manage other assets in addition to bitcoin, including assets to be developed by Blockstream and others over the coming months and years.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Malta, GreenAddress participated in the inaugural FinDEVr developers conference in San Francisco in 2014. The company’s presentation, titled “GreenAddress: Instant and Secure Bitcoin,” focused on bitcoin’s multi-signature features, which pave the way for both better security and services like instant confirmation to make arbitration easier. Earlier this year, GreenAddress launched its replace-by-fee option, which aims to facilitate bitcoin transactions. Its wallet is available in both iOS and Android.

With more than $76 million in funding, Blockstream is a Montreal, Quebec, Canada-based blockchain firm that specializes in sidechains. Sidechains are decentralized P2P networks that promote interoperability between blockchains, helping to improve liquidity and reduce fraud in alternative-currency transactions. Speaking of the importance of the technology, Blockstream investor Reid Hoffman wrote that the success of the company “will in turn generate new waves of technical and entrepreneurial innovation; it will help make Bitcoin the kind of open, highly adaptive platform upon which a vast array of complementary products and services can be built.” And with GreenAddress now onboard, let the building begin.

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GBG Group Agrees to Acquire IDScan Biometrics

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 29, 2016
Categories: IDscan Biometrics, Mergers & Acquisitions

It was a fast turnaround for FinovateEurope 2016 Best of Show winner IDScan Biometrics, a document authentication and facial recognition company. The London-based company today announced it is being acquired by identity intelligence company GB Group.

The companies anticipate the deal will close for $50 million (£37 million), with another $10.7 million (£8 million) contingent on reaching revenue and EBITDA targets 18 months after close. The deal is expected to add to GBG Group’s earnings per share in the first 12 months after the acquisition.

CEO Tamlyn Thompson and Dr. Zaher Zaidan, CFO, demoed IDScan Biometrics’ facial recognition algorithm.

IDScan offers a digital onboarding suite that reduces manual data entry and offers KYC and facial recognition tools for automation, speed, and efficiency. The company’s document-scan offering uses artificial intelligence and a digital library containing thousands of documents. At FinovateEurope 2016, the company demonstrated how its facial recognition algorithm tests a user’s face against the image on their ID.

IDScan brings more than 1,000 global clients to the table, including American Express, Barclays, and Gatwick Airport. GBG CEO Richard Law said, “GBG has followed IDscan Biometrics over the years and we have seen this business grow strongly, winning significant enterprise customers.”

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Encap Security Acquired by Client, AllClear ID

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 27, 2016
Categories: Encap, Mergers & Acquisitions

Software-based multifactor-authentication provider Encap Security has been acquired by AllClear ID, an Austin-based company that provides data-breach and identity-protection services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In a blog post announcing the change, Norway-based Encap made it clear that it will proceed with business as usual. The company will not only support its Smarter Authentication platform for new and existing customers, but also enhance its offerings by leveraging AllClear ID’s technology.

AllClear ID will use the acquisition to enhance its existing offerings using Encap’s device-authentication and e-signature technology. The move also allows AllClear ID to establish a presence in Europe to “capitalize on emerging opportunities, including major regulatory changes such as the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Payment Services Directive (PSD II).”

Adam Dolby, Encap vice president of business development, presented at FinovateFall 2015 in New York.

Founded in 2007, Encap debuted Omnichannel Enablement platform at FinovateFall 2015. VP of Business Development Adam Dolby began his presentation by describing why people dislike security. Dolby continued the demo by showing how Encap keeps things simple for end users by keeping the complexities of security behind-the-scenes.

Last week Norway-based BankID partnered with Encap to pilot in-app authentication for its online identity service. In the spring of 2015, Encap integrated with Apple’s TouchID to help financial institutions leverage a new authentication method.

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In Third Deal in Four Weeks, Nymbus Acquires Sharp BancSystems

By David Penn Posted on June 22, 2016
Categories: Acquisition, Mergers & Acquisitions, NYMBUS

At the beginning of the month, cloud-based core-processing platform developer NYMBUS announced that it had bought core data processing solutions provider, R.C. Olmstead. Two weeks later, NYMBUS was back in deal-making mode, acquiring credit union software maker KMR. Two acquisitions in three weeks is a pretty impressive pace. But who knew there was more to come?

Today we learn that NYMBUS has scooped up another company, this time purchasing fellow core-processing vendor, Sharp BancSystems (SBS). Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, but Banking Technology reports that the deal is the largest for NYMBUS to date. Along with the company’s other recent acquisitions, NYMBUS now has $200 million in intellectual property driving “tried and tested” banking software for publicly traded FIs.

Chief Experience Officer Mario Garcia demonstrated NYMBUS at FinovateSpring 2016 in San Jose.

NYMBUS founder Alex Lopatine praised SBS as a “best-in-class” industry pioneer for nearly thirty years. Nevertheless recognizing that its back-end core system was in need of an expensive overhaul in 2014, SBS decided that a partnership strategy would be the best approach and began conversations with NYMBUS in 2015. Interestingly, NYMBUS hired former Sharp BancSystems CEO and president Scott Sharp as its Chief Operating Officer in February, a move that now clearly foreshadowed the acquisition.

“The functionality that allowed banks to be on the top-performance list for all these years is being developed in the NYMBUS core today,” Sharp said. “There are inherent efficiencies built into the single stack application approach with a modern user experience, and there won’t be anything that can touch us in side-by-side comparisons in the very near future,” he explained.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Miami Beach, Florida, NYMBUS demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2016. Before its furious June acquisition pace, NYMBUS made headlines with its partnership with Geezeo in February, and launched its credit union collaboration service organization, CUNYMBUS in March. Also in March, NYMBUS was featured in Let’s Talk Payments as part of a look at innovative banking software companies.

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Reverse Takeover IPO Places ayondo on the Singapore Exchange

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 21, 2016
Categories: ayondo, Mergers & Acquisitions

In a $117 million (S$158 million) reverse takeover (RTO) deal, brokerage and social trading platform ayondo will be listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) after finalizing an agreement with Starland Holdings, a Singapore-based property developer.

A reverse takeover occurs when a private company acquires a public company in order to bypass the complicated IPO process. Frankfurt-based ayondo stated that it opted for a reverse takeover because of “volatility in financial markets.” The company’s press release says, “In such market conditions, an RTO provides greater certainty as key terms such as funds raised and valuation are agreed between buyer and seller, and not necessarily subject to prevailing market conditions as is always the case in an IPO. The RTO route also offers ayondo other advantages, such as lower listing costs.”

Starland anticipates the deal will help the company “expand its business in line with its diversification strategy into the fintech business” and will offer “more consistent and sustainable financial growth.” The purchase will be completed through the issuance of new shares of Starland. The finalization of the takeover is conditional, pending approval of shareholders.

ayondo debuts ayondo 3.0 at FinovateEurope 2013 in London

ayondo was founded in 2008 with a mission to revolutionize retail trading. The company’s brokerage platform lets users copy the moves of top traders to optimize returns. At FinovateEurope 2013, ayondo unveiled the newest version of its service, its London brokerage, and a trader career training curriculum. Last month, the company brought on Rick Fulton as CFO.

According to Singapore news site e27, ayondo is the first fintech company (and third tech company) to IPO via the SGX.

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Stock Gifting Platform Stockpile Acquires SparkGift

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 17, 2016
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Stockpile

Just in time to remind you of what would make a great Father’s Day gift, stock gift card company Stockpile acquired SparkGift, a startup behind a similar stock egifting idea.

Stockpile will transfer SparkGift’s customer base onto its own brokerage platform for free in the next three months. Upon transferring, SparkGift customers will receive new features, including 99-cent stock trades, an iOS app, and the ability for kids and teens to independently check their own accounts and place trades (with their moms’ and dads’ permission, of course).

Stockpile CEO Avi Lele describes SparkGift as “an innovator in personalizing and democratizing the stock market for the millennial generation” saying that the San Francisco-based startup “shares Stockpile’s mission of making investing accessible to everyone.”

Palo Alto-based Stockpile allows users to buy fractional stock shares starting at $10. In 2015 the company partnered with Blackhawk Network to offer physical gift cards in denominations of $25, $50, and $100 at select U.S. retailers.

Founded in 2010, Stockpile CEO Avi Lele and Chief Commercial Officer Dan Schatt launched the company at FinovateSpring 2014 in a demo that won Best of Show.

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NYMBUS Acquires KMR to Advance Footing into Credit Union Offerings

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 14, 2016
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, NYMBUS

Core processing platform NYMBUS has made its second acquisition in the past two weeks. The Florida-based company has purchased credit union software provider KMR in an effort to expand its geographic footprint, product offerings, and client base.

With this move, NYMBUS inherits KMR’s key products, AgilityWeb, a full-featured home banking solution, and AgilityOrg, a management and compliance tool set.

Joining the NYMBUS leadership team is Kai Ravnborg, former president of KMR and creator of the first PC-based credit union core system and the first Windows-based credit union core application. Ravnborg, who says the decision to join NYMBUS was a “no-brainer,” will serve as chief product officer for CUNYMBUS, a collaborative credit union service organization NYMBUS launched in March.

Founded in 2015, NYMBUS seeks to revolutionize the core processing industry to help small financial institutions gain a competitive edge against big banks by offering a core solution with all digital channels and payments. The company, which demonstrated at FinovateSpring 2016 and presented at FinDEVr New York 2016, acquired data processing solutions provider R. C. Olmstead earlier this month.

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NYMBUS Acquires R. C. Olmstead to Enhance Core Data Processing

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 2, 2016
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, NYMBUS

Core processing solution NYMBUS today added to its repertoire with the acquisition of R. C. Olmstead (RCO), a core data processing solutions provider.

Negotiations of the acquisition, which closed in March, began in the fall of 2015. As part of the deal, the Miami-based company will bring on RCO’s client base of 46 Midwest-based credit unions. NYMBUS has also acquired some of RCO’s talent, including “the team responsible for RCO’s conversions and implementations, as well as other RCO team members.”

RCO’s Founder Bob Olmstead, who launched the company in 1978, said the sale will both allow him to retire and help RCO to “not only survive, but be given the best chance to thrive in a continually changing and rapidly evolving marketplace.” Olmstead said the move assures him that RCO will “remain focused on its vision of marrying superior customer service with a cutting-edge, forward-facing product I feel will grow into the industry standard.”

NYMBUS CEO Alex Lopatine said the experience of combining the two companies has been “seamless” and “positive.”

NYMBUS debuted its modern approach to core processing at FinovateSpring 2016. Mario Garcia, the company’s chief experience officer, demonstrated how its bank-in-a-box offers a full-stack banking platform to help smaller financial institutions gain a competitive edge against big banks.

Launched in 2015, NYMBUS has accumulated $12 million in self-funded investment from company stakeholders and received $10 million in funding from outside investors. The company employs 60 people across the United States and counts 130 financial institutions as clients (including those from RCO).

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Ping Identity Acquired by Vista Equity Partners

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 1, 2016
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Ping Identity

Colorado-based Ping Identity, a cloud identity security solutions provider, announced today it has been acquired by Vista Equity Partners. The terms were not disclosed for the deal which is expected to close in Q3 of this year.

Austin-based Vista Equity Partners has almost $8 billion in capital commitments, partnering with firms in software and technology-enabled businesses. Founded in 2000, the firm has acquired four companies, including Ping.

The acquisition is anticipated to help Ping Identity accelerate the growth of its security solutions through acquisitions and to boost investment in its Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) capabilities. Ping Identity CEO Andre Durand says it’s “a great day for Ping Identity” and added that the acquisition “validates what we’ve built: the leading Identity and Access Management platform.”

In the press release, Ping Identity noted a few metrics:

Annual recurring revenue grew by 40% in 2015
Annual recurring revenue is expected to reach more than $100 million in 2016
Clients include 1,500 global enterprises, including over half of the Fortune 100

In February, the company launched enhancements for Ping Federate, an omnichannel authentication and access management solution that uses multifactor authentication, single sign on, and limited access security.

Founded in 2003, Ping Identity took the stage at FinovateEurope 2012. The demo showed how banks can increase conversion rates and reuse existing infrastructure by implementing social networking logins. The company has 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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