Dive Brief:

• Paymentus, which provides bill payment technology to some 1,300 billers in North America, plans to buy bill payments software company Payveris for $152.2 million in cash and stock, the company said Tuesday in a press release.
• Paymentus said it expects the acquisition to allow it to extend its network reach to the financial institutions Payveris currently services. The Payveris cloud-based software has allowed its 265 banks and credit unions to “modernize and simplify” their bill payment and money transfer capabilities for consumers, the company says.
• “The acquisition reinforces Paymentus’ mission to be the modern bill payment ecosystem for all industries, including the many financial institutions that are still burdened by siloed point solutions for money movement,” the press release said. “Payveris has a track record of efficiently displacing legacy payment systems and driving meaningful increases in consumer acquisition, engagement and retention for financial institutions.”

Dive Insight:

Redmond, Wash.-based Paymentus, which says it completed about 200 million bill payments last year, provides its Instant Payment Network to clients in the healthcare, utilities, financial services and insurance industries, among others. Its services let clients offer digital bill payment tools and related services to their customers, including millions of consumers globally.

“We started our relationship with Payveris as a multi-faceted partnership and it quickly became apparent that their technology and team are best-in-class and would be incredibly additive to our platform and mission,” Paymentus CEO Dushyant Sharma said in the release. 

The acquisition comes as the payments industry is being flooded with venture capital, which is supporting a host of new competition and thereby also fostering consolidation. As the funding fuels a pack of startups, incumbent payments players are being forced to partner up, or acquire companies, to protect their turfs and grow.

Paymentus raised capital to fuel expansion in a May initial public stock offering. The company's revenue for fiscal year 2021 is likely to jump between 25% and 27%, thanks partly to the acquisition of Payveris and bill aggregation technology company, Finovera, according to a report Tuesday from Wolfe Research. Paymentus also acquired Finovera recently, the company said in a separate earnings release Tuesday.

A separate report on Paymentus’ earnings and acquisitions from financial services company Baird estimated that Payveris has annual net revenue of about $10 million.

The company said it expects the Payveris acquisition to be completed in the third quarter this year.