• Empower announced plans to acquire Petal for an undisclosed amount.
• The deal will help Empower expand into the credit card market.
• Empower also announced it closed the acquisition of Philippines-based consumer credit and lending fintech Cashalo.

Empower, a fintech helping to extend credit to underserved consumers, announced plans to acquire underserved credit card provider Petal. Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close later this quarter, were not disclosed.

New York-based Petal was founded in 2018 to offer underserved consumers access to credit cards. To better help marginalized consumers access the credit they need, the company doesn’t require them to have a credit score to qualify for the card. Instead, Petal leverages users’ open banking data as underwriting data to offer them credit and help them establish a credit history. Empower anticipates integrating Petal’s technology into its own will help it broaden into the U.S credit card market.

“Safe, affordable credit is unavailable to tens of millions of consumers in the U.S. and billions worldwide. We believe that modern product design and new technologies like cash flow underwriting can be used to radically improve credit access around the world,” said Petal Co-founder Jason Rosen. “This merger brings together two of the leading innovators in this arena. Our combined product offerings, financial strength, technical capabilities, and global reach will allow us to move much faster to close the equity gap in credit.”

The news comes after Petal has been struggling with high interest rates as the cost of borrowing has increased. By June of last year, Petal had cut 20% of its staff and, though it raised $240 million in combined debt and equity funding in August, by November, rumors swirled that Petal would become insolvent if it did not find a buyer quickly.

As part of today’s news, Empower also announced it completed its acquisition of Cashalo, a Philippines-based consumer credit and lending fintech. Empower plans to combine both companies under the Empower name.

“In both companies, we found a shared commitment to harnessing technology and rich alternative data to unlock financial opportunity for more people who merit our consideration,” said Empower Co-founder and CEO Warren Hogarth. “I’m confident that by merging Petal and Cashalo into Empower, we amass new product, operational, and analytical capabilities to help alleviate the credit insecurity that billions of people around the world struggle with.”

Empower was founded in 2016 and uses its technology to underwrite consumers using real-time cash flow, other nontraditional data, and machine learning to assess credit risk. The company offers lines of credit, which are issued by FinWise Bank, and no-interest cash advances. Empower has two million active subscribers and achieved profitability in 2022.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich

• Nuvei has agreed to be acquired by Advent International, which plans to take Nuvei private in an all-cash deal valued at around $6.3 billion.
• Nuvei originally went public in 2020 and has a current market capitalization of $6.08 billion.
• The deal is expected to close in late 2024 or early 2025.

Payment acceptance technology provider Nuvei announced this week it has agreed to go private via an acquisition by private equity firm Advent International. The all-cash deal values Nuvei at around $6.3 billion.

Canada-based Nuvei offers global card acquiring services, alternative payment acceptance methods, crypto payments, fraud and risk management, analytics and more. The company offers serves businesses across a range of industries in more than 200 global markets, facilitating 150 currencies via 600 payment methods. Nuvei’s customers include large brands such as New Balance, Shein, and Microsoft.

“This transaction marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Nuvei, and we are glad to partner with Advent to continue to deliver for our customers and employees and capitalize on the significant opportunities that this investment provides,” said Nuvei Chair and CEO Philip Fayer. “Our strategic initiatives have always focused on accelerating our customers revenue, driving innovation across our technology, and developing our people. Bringing in a partner with such extensive experience in the payments sector will continue to support our development.”

Fayer will continue to serve as Nuvei’s Chair and CEO and will lead business operations. The company’s current leadership team will also remain in place once the deal is closed.

Nuvei went public in 2020 and now has a market capitalization of $6.08 billion. The company anticipates that operating under Advent, which has been investing in the payments space since 1984, will offer it resources, operational and sector expertise, and the capacity for investment.

“Our deep expertise and experience in payments give us conviction in the opportunity to support Nuvei as it continues to scale from its base in Canada as a global player in the space,” said Advent Managing Director Bo Huang. “We look forward to collaborating closely with Nuvei to capitalize on emerging opportunities to help shape the future of the payments industry.”

The deal is expected to close in late 2024 or early 2025.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov

• GoCardless has agreed to acquire Nuapay for an undisclosed amount.
• GoCardless anticipates the move will expand its availability, as well as help it launch new products for additional verticals, including payroll, financial services, utilities, insurance, gaming, and gambling.
• The agreement has not been finalized and is currently subject to regulatory approvals.

Bank-to-bank payments company GoCardless announced it has agreed to acquire Nuapay. The financial terms of the agreement, which is subject to regulatory approvals, have not been disclosed.

The Nuapay brand is owned by EML Payments, which was founded in 2003 and headquartered in Australia, where it trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker EML. EML Payments acquired Nuapay in 2021 for an undisclosed amount. Nuapay itself was originally founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Ireland. The company launched to leverage open banking to power account-to-account payments. In addition to pay-by-bank services, Nuapay also offers credit transfers, direct debits, verified payouts, and more.

“How the world pays and gets paid is being transformed, with account-to-account payments and open banking playing the central role in that shift. Building on that shared vision, this acquisition will result in a combined organization with deep domestic and international payments and open banking expertise plus the scale to harness these opportunities for our clients and partners,” said Nuapay Co-founder and CEO Brian Hanrahan.

GoCardless anticipates that acquiring Nuapay will expand the availability and influence of GoCardless’ services through partners and intermediaries, including Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Payment Service Providers (PSPs). The company also expects the deal will strengthen GoCardless’ standing as a significant player in the payment industry, potentially increasing market share, enhancing its reputation, and improving its competitive advantage.

As for more concrete benefits, integrating Nuapay’s offering into GoCardless’ bank payment platform will help GoCardless launch new products for additional verticals. Some of the new use cases could include payroll, financial services, utilities, insurance, gaming, and gambling.

“Nuapay is an established account-to-account payment provider and open banking specialist with a blue chip customer base,” said GoCardless Co-founder and CEO Hiroki Takeuchi. “Its business is perfectly aligned to our growth strategy, and will accelerate our vision to become the world’s bank payment network.”

GoCardless, which describes itself as being “on the path to profitability,” has recently launched Embed, its white-label customer acquisition tool for PSPs, and has signed partner agreements with Plend, Bluefort, Moss, and others.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska

• Financial infrastructure platform Xalts is acquiring Contour Network.
• Xalts will leverage the purchase to create embedded solutions for trade and supply chain finance.
• Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Singapore-based financial infrastructure platform Xalts announced this week it is buying Contour Network with an aim to enhance global trade finance. Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Contour Network was built in 2017 by a consortium of eight global banks to create an open trade finance network. Today, more than 22 banks and 100+ global businesses use Contour’s network for digital trade finance.

Xalts helps banks streamline global trade, receivables, and supply chain financing operations with tools that facilitate everything from origination to multiparty workflows. The company will leverage Contour’s processes and integrations to facilitate communication and transactions between businesses and financial institutions in its network. Once the deal is complete, Xalts will initially focus on creating solutions that banks, logistics companies, and fintechs can embed within their own applications for their business customers.

Xalts CEO Ashutosh Goel said the company aims to create a “Plaid for Trade.” He explained, “Our vision is to expand the scope of Contour’s network which is trusted by banks and corporates, and build it into a rail that enables businesses to access digital solutions for trade and supply chain finance offered by banks, fintechs and technology partners. Combining our platform with Contour’s Network will allow participants to develop and deploy customized solutions quickly.”

Xalts, which leverages the blockchain to help its clients build tokenization applications, was founded in 2022 and currently has a team of more than 50 employees spread across offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, India, the U.A.E., and U.K.

“Citi has long been a leader in driving innovation in financial services. We invested in Contour in 2020 and led the seed round for Xalts in 2022,” said Citi Ventures Director Everett Leonidas. “The combination of these two companies into one firm with an expanded vision and a great leadership team will accelerate innovation in global trade finance.”

With Xalts aiming to become the “Plaid for Trade,” the partnership opens up new potential for businesses to access digital solutions for trade and supply chain finance. This move, combined with the company’s use of the blockchain, offers the potential to create more accessible and efficient solutions to a wider range of businesses.

Photo by Kurt Cotoaga on Unsplash

• Ramp acquired procurement startup Venue.
• Venue will help Ramp improve its Procurement product with purchase orders that automatically sync up to accounting platforms, collaboration tools, and new approval workflows.
• Venue was founded in 2022. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Business finance automation platform Ramp announced it has acquired procurement startup Venue and that it has made improvements to its Procurement product automations. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Ramp expects the acquisition will help it expand beyond corporate cards as it tackles inefficiencies across more of the financial tech stack.

Venue was founded in 2022 to help businesses simplify how they review, approve, and manage the cost of vendor relationships. The company’s tool helps employees request what they need, while offering finance teams visibility into all vendor requests spending. A year after launch, Venue was supporting clients with 500 to 1,000 employees and had raised $1.2 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Exponent Founders Capital, and Basecase Capital.

“With Venue, we built a frictionless purchasing experience for employees and empowered businesses to buy what they needed while staying in-policy,” said Venue CEO and Co-founder TK Kong. “We’re excited to bring our expertise to Ramp and together help enable more efficiency, productivity, and seamless decision-making for our customers.”

Along with today’s acquisition, Ramp is launching improvements to its Procurement product with support from the Venue team. The combined team will offer businesses more control over and insight into employee spend, speed up review cycles, and help organizations save costs on IT and software spending. Now available for businesses using Ramp Plus, the new features include:

• Integrates the contract review process into Ramp’s approval workflow.
• Dynamic intake forms that capture every purchase request in one place.
• Purchase orders that sync to accounting platforms and offer auto-code matched invoices.
• Collaboration tools that allow all parties to comment and tag team members within requests.
• An activity feed to track procurement processes and keep record of approvals and changes made to requests and purchase orders.
• Seat Intelligence to track who is using the software and ensure businesses are getting their money’s worth from their SaaS contracts.

Ramp’s accounts payable product currently processes over $10 billion in accounts payable volume each year. The company, which is best known for its corporate card and expense management tools, counts more than 15,000 business clients.

Photo by Ihsan Adityawarman