PAYMENTS
Global Processing Services | October 14, 2021
Global Processing Services (“GPS”), the leading global payment technology platform, today announced it has raised over US$300 million from Advent International (“Advent”) and Viking Global Investors (“Viking”), who will co-control the company. The investment by Advent will be funded through Advent Tech and Sunley House Capital, an affiliate of Advent.
GPS’ API-first payment technology platform enables innovative card programmes for the world’s leading fintechs, digital challenger banks and embedded finance providers. Its platform has helped scale multiple unicorns and powers a vast array of prominent fintechs across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East, including Revolut, Curve, Starling Bank, Zilch, WeLab Bank and Paidy. Through a single unified code base, GPS enables its customers and partners to launch and scale card programmes across 48 countries, supported by integrations with over 95 issuers. To date, it has issued over 190 million physical and virtual cards, and last year processed more than 1.3 billion transactions on its cloud-based platform.
“GPS provides key payments technology infrastructure, enabling the global fintech revolution. Their agile, resilient and modern cloud platform drives some of the most innovative use cases and allows fintechs to globalise through a single API,” commented Peter James, Director at Advent International.
“Through their customer-centric innovation, GPS has quietly established a leading position in key markets around the world with an attractive, diversified and global customer base. Together with Viking, we look forward to supporting GPS’ leadership team to expand the business’s product offering and accelerate its international reach.”
“We are delighted to partner with Advent and Viking, with their deep experience and track record in payments and fintech, and, who share our bold vision for the next generation of global payments,”
said Joanne Dewar, Chief Executive Officer at GPS.
“GPS has been at the heart of the global fintech explosion, simplifying access to the global rails of the new digital payments era. This investment will allow us to turbo charge our geographic footprint and product expansion plans as we drive the payments ecosystem in the key verticals of today and tomorrow, including digital banking, Buy Now Pay Later, B2B virtual cards, financial empowerment, and much more.”
Advent has a strong track record in the growth of businesses across the payment and software industries, including a recent investment in Planet, the global integrated payments leader, and Dock, the Latin American financial technology infrastructure provider where Advent’s affiliate, Sunley House Capital, co-invested alongside Viking. Worldwide since 2008, Advent has invested ~US$5 billion across 12 payments platform companies.
Viking has a long history investing in payments and software, across both the private and public markets. Viking is investing in GPS out of its private equity vehicles, which currently manage over $17 billion. Recent payments investments include Dock, the Latin American financial technology infrastructure provider where it co-invested alongside Advent, and Clip, the Mexican digital payments and commerce platform.
The transaction will be subject to customary closing conditions.
About Global Processing Services (GPS)
Global Processing Services (GPS) is the trusted and proven go-to payments processing partner for today’s leading fintechs, including Revolut, Curve, Starling Bank, Zilch, WeLab Bank and Paidy. GPS has to-date issued over 190 million physical and virtual cards, enabled in over 48 countries, and last year processed over 1.3 billion transactions on its API-first cloud-based platform.
GPS’ highly flexible and configurable platform places the control firmly in the hands of global fintechs, digital banks, and embedded finance providers, enabling them to deliver rich functionality to the cardholder. It is a multi-award-winning issuer processor powering next generation payment segments, including expense management, B2B payments, crypto, lending and credit (including Buy Now Pay Later propositions), digital banking, FX, remittance, open banking and more.
GPS is certified by Visa and Mastercard to process and manage any credit, debit or prepaid card transaction globally, with offices in London, Newcastle, Singapore, Sydney and Dubai. Its platform is equipped to meet the stringent standards required by Tier 1 banks, integrating with 95 issuer partners and operates programmes for a client base across the globe.
Company highlights from the last two years include:
Expansion into Asia-Pacific through establishing a new regional centre of excellence in Singapore alongside a hub in Sydney, with a fast-growing customer base including WeLab Bank, the first homegrown virtual bank in Hong Kong, and Paidy, the largest Buy Now Pay Later player in Japan.
Secured strategic investment from Visa, a long-term partner of GPS, and established a new regional centre of excellence in United Arab Emirates (UAE) having been selected as one of its preferred issuer processors in Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
About Advent International
Founded in 1984, Advent International is one of the largest and most experienced global private equity investors. The firm has invested in over 380 private equity investments across 42 countries, and as of June 30, 2021, had €68 billion in assets under management. With 15 offices in 12 countries, Advent has established a globally integrated team of over 245 private equity investment professionals across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. The firm focuses on investments in five core sectors, including business and financial services; health care; industrial; retail, consumer and leisure; and technology. After 35 years dedicated to international investing, Advent remains committed to partnering with management teams to deliver sustained revenue and earnings growth for its portfolio companies. For more information, visit:
About Viking Global Investors LP
Founded in 1999, Viking is a global investment management firm that manages approximately $48 billion of capital for its investors. It has offices in Greenwich, New York, Hong Kong, London, and San Francisco and is registered as an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. For more information, please visit www.vikingglobal.com.
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PAYMENTS
Billtrust | October 13, 2021
Billtrust (NASDAQ: BTRS), a B2B accounts receivable (AR) automation and integrated payments leader, announced today it has acquired iController, a leading B2B provider of intelligent solutions for collections management, for $58 million, financed with cash on hand. Founded in 2007, Belgium-based iController’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering enables a wide range of users, from credit and collections managers to CFOs, to see information and communication in real time, providing visibility into cash flow management.
“Acquiring a great company like iController is consistent with our growth plan of strategic global expansion in targeted ways to broaden our customer footprint and provide extended value to our current customers,”
said Flint Lane, Billtrust Founder & CEO.
“We are pleased to welcome Peter Janssens and the entire iController team to Billtrust,” said Steve Pinado, Billtrust President. “With 566 European customers, iController is a powerful resource for credit and collections professionals and a strong strategic fit for Billtrust, expanding our physical presence in the European market while enhancing our global collections capabilities.”
“Joining the Billtrust family will help us more rapidly scale our business and increase the level of resources we can deploy to better serve our growing customer base,” said Peter Janssens, iController Founder & CEO. “Our shared values and aspirations make this an ideal combination for iController.”
iController’s team will continue to operate from its offices in Ghent, Belgium and Amsterdam, The Netherlands, expanding Billtrust’s strategic presence in the region.
About Billtrust
Billtrust is a leading provider of cloud-based software and integrated payment processing solutions to simplify and automate B2B commerce. Accounts receivable is broken and relies on conventional processes that are outdated, inefficient, manual and largely paper based. Billtrust is at the forefront of the digital transformation of AR, providing mission-critical solutions that span credit decisioning and monitoring, online ordering, invoice delivery, payments and remittance capture, invoicing, cash application and collections. For more information, visit Billtrust.com.
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PAYMENTS
Finastra | October 12, 2021
As Sibos 2021 opened (virtually) today, Finastra announced new instant onboarding capabilities for its Fusion Payments To Go solution. The move enables banks to access the benefits of Finastra's SaaS solution at speed and with reduced cost, meaning organizations can bring innovative and tailored payments products to their customers with greater efficiency as demands change.
Oren Marmur, General Manager, Payments at Finastra, said, "We are committed to making payments transformation as easy as possible. This capability offers simple onboarding with a short lead time, so that banks can overcome legacy technology constraints, implement with transparency around timeframes and cost, and bring leading payments products to customers at speed. We're talking about reducing the process of onboarding to just a few days with go live in a few months, rather than what might have taken some banks a year. Beyond the significantly reduced onboarding and go live timeframes, this will allow smaller banks, for which the cost of complex payments transformation might be prohibitive and the operational processes too complex, to enjoy the benefits of an advanced Payments Hub with modernized capabilities."
Payments To Go is a SaaS payments solution, with out-of-the-box configurations, to support banks' payment growth ambitions. It is built on Finastra's proven Fusion Global PAYplus software, benefitting from best practice full end-to-end processing. Via open APIs, the instant onboarding capability reduces manual processes, increasing efficiency. A portal enables bank executives to answer a series of questions, automatically generating a new payments environment which they can personalize.
Gareth Lodge, Senior Analyst, Payments at Celent said, "One of the promises of moving to the cloud has long been agility, replacing legacy technology with modern, flexible technology. Yet, one of the major challenges for banks is how to actually move from legacy technology. Since payments probably touch on more bank systems than any other technology, it can be a slow and complex process to figure out even how to migrate. Given the number of banks actively looking to migrate to the cloud, tools that make the process of onboarding simple and quick will benefit not just the banks but their vendors as well."
Moreover, Payments To Go being in the cloud ensures flexible infrastructure that adapts with payments peaks. This paves the way for a Payments-as-a-Service approach, with an open architecture and evergreen updates, keeping banks ahead of market changes, delivering faster innovation and business growth opportunity.
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