PayPoint acquires duo of SME merchant card leasing firms in £70m acquisition

A firm which specialises in enabling in-store bill payments has acquired a duo of card leasing firms in a multi-million pound acquisition.

PayPoint has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Handepay and Merchant Rentals from a consortium of private investors.

Operating in the UK since 2006, Handepay provides card payment services to SMEs, as well as establishing leasing agreements with SME merchants for card payment terminals through Merchant Rentals.

The cash consideration for the acquisition is expected to be £70m on a cash free debt free basis, after closing balance sheet adjustments. PayPoint aims for the deal to create a combined national card payments business with customer diversity: over 30,000 SMEs, spanning the grocery, auto trade, clothing, household goods and hospitality sectors.

Nick Wiles, chief executive officer of PayPoint plc, commented: “Our acquisition of Handepay and Merchant Rentals will significantly increase our card payments capability and broaden our SME customer base.

“This important step refocuses PayPoint towards a core growth area and creates synergies through cross selling of other PayPoint services and leveraging the scale of the combined business.

“Handepay has delivered a resilient performance through Covid-19, through the breadth of its customer base and strong recovery of active merchants after the first lockdown, and has a proactive plan in response to the most recent national restrictions.

“I am equally pleased to welcome the Handepay management team into the PayPoint Group and look forward to working with them as we deliver on the exciting potential of the combined card business.”

Andy Peake, chief executive officer of Handepay, added: “I’m incredibly proud of the business we’ve built, now serving over 21,000 merchants and ranked the no.1 card service processing provider on Trustpilot.

“I believe we’ve found the right home in PayPoint to take us to the next stage of our growth. The whole team are excited to be joining the PayPoint Group and benefiting from the scale, expertise and market leadership that they have built in omni-channel payments and technology over the last 24 years.”

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