On July 17, 2017, Worldline S.A. announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Digital River World Payments (DRWP) from its private equity owner Siris Capital Group.
The payments industry is consolidating from the top-down (e.g., Vantiv acquiring WorldPay for $10 billion), bottom-up (with several recent deals below $20 million), and now at the middle tier—seen here with Worldline’s acquisition of payments business Digital River.
DRWP is based in Sweden and will provide Worldline with access to key markets in North and Latin America as well as in Scandinavia. We estimate trailing DRWP revenue at US$35-40 million and a transaction value of around $100 million.
Worldline is a leading European payment processing company based in France. Previously, it has acquired PaySquare and created a joint venture with Equens. The company is majority owned (over 70%) by the French IT consulting and systems integration company Atos.
As we predicted in our note on the WorldPay/Vantiv deal (Summer Heat: FinTech Heats Up), Worldline was one of the players expected to make a move in this consolidation play.
See the research note attached below for analysis of this transaction’s impact.