Dive Brief:

• Shift4 has paid C$200 million, equal to about $148 million in U.S. dollars, to purchase the giftcard company Givex, which is a global business with a historical base in Toronto, according to a press release issued Monday by the Canadian company.
• Givex has a presence in ten countries, also including the United Kingdom, Brazil and China, with about 350 employees, according to the company’s website. "Givex has a considerable footprint around the world which will dramatically increase Shift4's overall customer base," Shift4 President Taylor Lauber said in the press release.
• The all-cash deal is expected to be completed in November and offers a 64% premium for Givex’s stock, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Dive Insight:

Givex, which was founded in 1999 and is led by CEO Don Gray, provides cloud-based software services to merchants for payments; customer engagement, including via loyalty programs; and point-of-sale systems in omnichannel environments. It also provides clients with capabilities for mining data.

Givex’s annual revenue has jumped 64% to C$80.8 million, nearly $60 million, over the past four years, up from C$49.3 million in 2019.

In a separate press release announcing the acquisition, Shift4 name-dropped some of Givex’s big clients, including the apparel company Nike, hotel chain Marriott and fast food restaurant Wendy’s. A spokesperson for Shift4 didn’t immediately respond to questions about how many Givex employees might be absorbed in the merger and how the company is handling a slew of acquisitions this year.

Shift4 has been buying up companies all over the world in a bid to become a giant payments player operating in multiple areas of the payments market.

Earlier this year, Shift4 said it would purchase the Atlanta-based point-of-sale vendor Revel Systems for $250 million. It completed that transaction in June. That same month, Shift4 agreed to acquire a majority stake in the German software firm Vectron Systems AG, a supplier of point-of-sale systems to the restaurant and hospitality in the European market.

Shift4’s acquisitions follow reports in February and March that Shift4 might be an acquisition candidate itself. CEO Jared Isaacman hadn’t been shy about expressing his dismay that Shift4’s stock was trading lower than he would have liked, and the company undertook a review last year of strategic alternatives, including the possibility of taking the company private. So far, it has remained a publicly-traded company.

Shift4 is seeking to grow in an increasingly competitive payments industry, particularly in its sweet spot servicing merchants, from stadiums to restaurants to retailers. Toast, Adyen and Fiserv’s Clover are all catering to some facets of that merchant market as well and similarly spearheading aggressive growth.