Digital Transactions – 1/26/16: Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) is buying acquirer TransFirst Holdings Inc. for $2.35 billion, Columbus, Ga.-based TSYS announced Tuesday. TransFirst chief executive John Shlonsky is confident the two companies will have a seamless integration. The deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter, puts an end to TransFirst’s plans to explore an initial public offering. Hauppauge, N.Y.-based TransFirst last October filed an S-1 registration statement preliminary to an IPO. TransFirst initially prepared for a partial IPO in 2014. It later put that on hold when private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners, San Francisco, purchased TransFirst from Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a New York City-based private-equity firm that bought TransFirst in 2007. Tuesday’s announcement means that TransFirst, with more than 235,000 small and mid-size merchants, will become part of a larger, more diversified processor that counts more than 500,000 merchants as customers.
“TransFirst significantly increases our scale and opportunity within the highly attractive merchant space, and particularly the profitable and fast-growing small and medium-sized business segment,” M. Troy Woods, TSYS chairman, president, and chief executive, said in a press release. “With the added strength of TransFirst, TSYS will be uniquely positioned with significant scale and strength across issuer processing, merchant services, and prepaid program management.”
TransFirst also has distribution deals with more than 1,300 organizations that include integrated software vendors, health-care organizations, not-for-profits, referral banks, associations, and e-commerce entities.
Once the deal closes, John Shlonsky, TransFirst’s president and chief executive, will replace Mark Pyke as senior executive vice president and president of the company’s merchant segment. Pyke, who joined TSYS in 2010, will leave the company.
TSYS has been interested in TransFirst for the past two years, Jared Drieling, business intelligence manager at payments consultancy The Strawhecker Group, tells Digital Transactions News. “It definitely makes sense for a couple of reasons,” Drieling says. “Clearly, TransFirst is a little more focused on small and mid-size businesses, where TSYS has a little more focus on larger retailers. As we’ve seen with other merchant acquirers, the more profitable segments are in the small and mid-size sector.”
Click here to read more: http://www.digitaltransactions.net/news/story/5853

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