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M&A activity continued to make headway in the final week of October with the announcements of several notable acquisitions within the merchant acquiring industry. Foremost, Visa announced on Tuesday (Oct. 27th) their intention to acquire YellowPepper, a Miami-based fintech provider who offers APIs to issuers and processors in the Latin America and Caribbean region. This acquisition helps advance Visa’s “network of networks” strategy by applying YellowPepper’s platform to Visa’s real-time payments solution, Visa Direct. Furthermore on Visa, the company’s intended purchase of Plaid, announced earlier this year, is under question by the Department of Justice (DOJ) due to antitrust concerns. The outcome of the DOJ’s decision could impair the execution of this transaction.
Separately, REPAY announced this week their acquisition of a B2B payments and accounts payable automation provider, CPS Payment Services. REPAY will pay up to $93 million for the transaction, of which $78 million will be paid at closing using cash on hand. The transaction is expected to increase REPAY’s total annual B2B payment volume to over $4 billion and expanded their virtual card offering.
Lastly, Celero Commerce announced on Wednesday (Oct. 28th) their second acquisition of 2020. The company purchased TransNational Payments, Illinois-based ISO. With the addition of TransNational Payments, Celero now serves 40,000 merchants, 150 financial institutions, and processes more than $14 billion in annual card volume.