With global financial services companies buying financial technology companies to bolster their positions in the data provision, software-as-a-service, or SaaS, and buy-now-pay-later, or BNPL, markets, there was no shortage of M&A activity in the final months of 2020, with more deals expected in the SaaS and BNPL space.
Nasdaq Inc. agreed to buy anti-money-laundering specialist Verafin Inc. for $2.75 billion; Alliance Data Systems Corp. struck a deal to bought BNPL fintech Bread, also known as Lon Operations LLC, for $450 million; and Stripe Inc. agreed to buy Nigerian payments company Paystack Payments Ltd. for $200 million.
S&P Global Inc.'s deal to buy IHS Markit Ltd. eclipses all other fintech deals this year in terms of size, with a deal value of more than $40 billion. The merger, subject to regulatory approval, is set to unite two of Wall Street's biggest financial data providers.
In the meantime, one of the most high-profile mergers of 2020, Visa Inc.'s acquisition of data aggregator Plaid Inc., hangs in the balance after the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit citing competitive concerns in November.
Nasdaq branches out
Nasdaq's purchase of Canada-based Verafin, which provides software that helps banks to detect money laundering, will help the company grow its position in the SaaS market, analysts say.
New York-based Nasdaq is best-known as an exchange operator, but also provides surveillance software that helps the trading arms of financial institutions spot market abuse and manipulation. The Verafin deal signals that this part of the business is going to become a lot more important in the future, according to analysts at Oppenheimer & Co.
"We have been stressing the idea that [Nasdaq] is much more than a traditional exchange and thus shouldn't be valued as one. The acquisition of Verafin ... accelerates the pivot to being a leading SaaS-technology provider to global markets," according to a November note from the investment bank.
The deal, slated to close in the first quarter of 2021, should add $140 million to full-year revenues for next year, Oppenheimer said.
Analysts at U.S. investment bank Piper Sandler also took a positive view of the deal.
North America-focused Verafin will complement Nasdaq's existing "global leadership" in trade surveillance software across Asia-Pacific and Europe, according to a November note.
The SaaS market could see further consolidation in 2021, with more fintech M&A, Owen Lau, executive director and senior analyst of exchanges, information analytics and asset management at Oppenheimer & Co, said in an interview.
Alliance's Bread and butter
Columbus, Ohio-based Alliance Data Systems provides branded credit cards for retailers such as Victoria's Secret and Sephora, as well as private and co-branded cards. The company's decision to buy Bread suggests that it could be feeling "a little bit threatened" by the burgeoning BNPL market, and that it is keen to get a piece of the action, according to Jordan McKee, research director at 451 Research, an S&P Global Market Intelligence company.
BNPL has seen explosive growth in the past year and shows no sign of slowing down. Global consumer spending involving BNPL and point-of-sale finance on e-commerce channels is slated to grow to $680 billion in 2025, a 92% rise over the $353 billion seen in 2019, according to fintech research company Kaleido Intelligence.
This is not the first acquisition that Alliance Data Systems has made in the space, having bought up Baltimore-based point-of-sale financing company blispay inc. in 2019, McKee said.
"They are trying to build up a defense," he said in an interview.
The BNPL market is "ripe for consolidation" and there could be more M&A to follow in this space in the coming year, McKee said.
Emerging market deals
San Francisco-based Stripe entered into a deal to buy Lagos, Nigeria-based payments company Paystack in October, citing a desire to play a role in Africa's rapidly growing e-commerce market. Paystack processes around half of all online transactions in its home market of Nigeria, and services around 60,000 businesses in Nigeria and Ghana. It has its sights set on expansion across Africa and recently set up a pilot with businesses in South Africa, according to a statement from Stripe.
Western Union's acquisition of a 15% stake in the Saudi Digital Payments Company, or stc pay, a subsidiary of Saudi Telecom Company, also appears to have been motivated by a desire for exposure to a high-growth market. With more than 4 million customers and a recognized brand in the Gulf region, stc is "is poised to experience strong growth in the future," Western Union said in a statement.
Emerging markets such as Africa and Latin America are an enticing proposition for large, global payments companies, but it can be "really challenging" for outsiders to get a foothold, 451 Research's McKee said. For this reason, entering the market by buying up a local company can feel like a safer bet than attempting to grow organically, he said.
California-based Visa's agreement in October to buy YellowPepper, a company that provides proprietary technology to banks and fintechs in the Caribbean and Latin America, fits in with this philosophy, he added.
Visa's Plaid deal under the microscope
But Visa's landmark deal of the year has recently been called into question. The Department of Justice, in the lawsuit it filed in November, said Visa's $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid would take out "an innovative new solution that would be a substitute" for Visa's online debit services," leading to the creation of a monopoly. Visa, however, says that the DoJ's assertions are "flawed" and that it intends to fight for the deal in court.
Daniel Hanley, policy analyst at the Open Markets Institute, a think tank that campaigns against monopolies, said there need to be "clear, bright-line merger rules" in the U.S. that spell out what is and is not acceptable when it comes to large mergers. The federal government's enforcement of rules to prevent monopolies is "haphazard," as evidenced by its recent approval of two mega-deals in financial services, he said in an email. These are Morgan Stanley's $13 billion acquisition of online brokerage E*TRADE Financial LLC, and Charles Schwab Corp.'s 2019 deal to buy rival retail broker TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. for $26 billion, he said.
Clearer rules around competition would "incentivize firms to invest in their operations and workers, rather than engage in cheap growth by acquisitions, which research shows only benefits financiers and shareholders," Hanley said.