Iyzico, a Turkish company that is part of Prosus’ fintech business, has signed a deal to acquire Paynet for R1.6bn.
On Tuesday, Iyzico — which is owned by Prosus’ PayU — said it had agreed to buy Paynet, another Turkish fintech player, for $87m (R1.606bn).
Selling the Paynet business is Arena Group, not to be confused with Business Day’s owners, Arena Holdings.
The company said the strategic move marks “a pivotal moment in Iyzico’s journey towards enhancing its portfolio and expanding its market reach and stands to be one of the largest acquisitions by a Turkish technology company in recent years”.
Iyzico specialises in helping e-commerce sites and other apps easily accept online payments, and currently serves more than 120,000 merchants and 6-million consumers.
Paynet, on the other hand, has been around for more than 20 years and is one of Turkey’s top payments operators, helping to digitise financial processes of more than 30,000 businesses in the country.
By integrating Paynet’s expertise, technology and customer base into its own system when the transaction is complete, Iyzico says it is poised to deliver a more comprehensive service set with the inclusion business-to-business (B2B) payments and collections solutions offered by Paynet.
It says Paynet’s payments and collections services will complement Iyzico’s existing offerings, enabling the combined entity to provide a broader range of solutions.
“Iyzico is thrilled to announce the agreement for the acquisition of Paynet a move that underscores our dedication to driving innovation and value for our customers,” Iyzico CEO Orkun Saitoglu said.
“By joining forces with Paynet, we will be strengthening our capabilities and positioning ourselves for enhanced growth and a successful position in the competitive Turkish fintech landscape.”
This comes as Prosus is preparing to spin off PayU with plans to have the unit in a “listable” form by the end of 2024, interim CEO Ervin Tu recently told Business Day.
PayU, founded in 2002, is a digital payments service provider with a presence in more than 50 markets. The platform is used by 450,000 merchants and millions of consumers — making it one of the biggest — and has fintech investments totalling more than $1bn.
In early 2023, Naspers’ Amsterdam-listed subsidiary agreed to sell PayU’s Global Payments Organisation (GPO) to UK-based Rapyd for $610m (about R11bn) cash as part of efforts to streamline the group’s fintech operations.
The group had committed that PayU, which is wholly owned by Prosus, will be profitable by the end of the financial year ending March 31, making it a prime target for a stock market flotation.
Prosus reported that PayU enjoyed a strong overall performance in the six months to September, with the core payments service provider (PSP) business turning a profit and growth expected to continue in India.
Consolidated revenue for its payments and fintech division grew 32% to $497m, as the core PSP business grew total payment volumes by 20% and reported a trading profit margin of 2%.
Consolidated trading losses narrowed to $22m.
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