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Towards the end of July, M&A activity within the merchant acquiring industry saw a big increase in the number of deals announced. Just in the last week of July, approximately ten deals were announced that involved merchant acquiring. While M&A activity remained fairly low throughout the second quarter, largely due to COVID-19, activity is continuing to see an uptick. This was apparent this week with the announcement of Paya and FinTech Acquisition Corp. III, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), merger agreement. As part of the merger, Paya will bypass a traditional IPO and become a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol PAYA. GTCR, which owns a majority equity in Paya, will remain the company’s largest stakeholder. The reflected enterprise value of the combined companies is approximately $1.3 billion, and the transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
In other M&A news, TouchBistro announced their acquisition of CRM provider, TableUp. Through this acquisition, TouchBistro will fully integrate TableUp’s guest management solution into its POS and restaurant management platform.