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This week brought some big news for the Colorado tech scene in the form of a billion dollar exit: Cincinnati-based payment processing company Vantiv is set to acquire Mercury Payment Systems for $1.65 billion.
Mercury, based in Durango, is a payment technology service leader whose services are
heavily embedded in point of sale software applications. They are currently majority owned by the global leader in technology investing, Silver Lake.
Vantiv is the current leader in payment processing services. The acquisition of Mercury is just one more strategic step for Vantiv to obtain significant growth in the integrated payments space. Projections from the 2012 McKinsey Payment study, show it has potential to represent 30 percent of the total payments volume by 2017.
“The emergence of integrated payment technology at the point of sale delivers a differentiated
merchant experience and creates a highly efficient, cloud-based delivery model for customer
acquisition and retention,” President and CEO of Vantiv, Charles Drucker, said in a joint press release.
So what does this mean for Mercury Payment Systems? The management team, including CEO Matt Taylor will remain with the company. The offices in Colorado are here to stay as well.
“Vantiv and Mercury are aligned in our desire to create integrated software solutions that fulfill the specialized needs of merchants,” Taylor said. “Software developers and dealers are helping to lead the way for the future of payments, and combining with Vantiv puts us in a strong competitive position to jointly offer a broader set of value-added products and services to our partners and merchants.”
Mercury boasts a network of more than 3,000 software developers and dealers that serve SMBs in the U.S. and Canada. Mercury generated net revenue of $237 million in 2013 and showed year over year growth of 17 percent. With numbers like that, Vantiv is expecting to add one to two percentage points to its net revenue per year.
The acquisition is set to close by the end of the second quarter of 2014.
This proves to be an exciting endeavor for both Mercury and Vantiv. According to Drucker,“bringing the companies together will dramatically enhance our distribution and technology capabilities to serve a number of large and growing industry verticals.”
