Paysafe acquires viafintech as it eyes growth in Europe
Paysafe, a leading payments platform has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the German fintech company, viafintech, in an all-cash transaction that is expected to increase its presence in Germany and across Europe as well.
viafintech has the biggest bank independent infrastructure in the German region and that makes it an ideal candidate for a payments platform like Paysafe to be able to use this infrastructure and build financial services that would challenge the legacy systems that banks operate in currently. Paysafe also has plans to cross-sell services offered by either company to the users of the other which would help it to grow its userbase, The financial details of the transaction are not yet known.
Sebastian Seifert, Co-founder and Managing Director of viafintech, added: “We are delighted to become part of the Paysafe Group and believe this move will enable us to build on our business achievements to date and accelerate our future growth as Europe’s number one, non-banking, cash-in / cash-out infrastructure, further fuelling the shift away from legacy banking and driving more financial inclusion in general.”
vaifintech has been the pioneer of a concept that it calls as ‘mobile ATM’ where the users can deposit and withdraw cash at various merchant stores using a bar code and this has been gaining in popularity over the last few years as more users prefer to go the digital way and are tired of using the bank branches. The banks have also realized that the cost of running a branch is likely to be too much in the coming years as the users prefer digital banking for all banking services and the banks have started shutting down their branches in anticipation of diminishing demand.
Viafintech also has presence in 5 other countries which gives it a strong and reliable network of merchants and users in the region. For Paysafe, it is the second acquisition in the short term after the acquisition of SafetyPay just about a week back as it looks to grow in the Latin American region as well with a mission of growing globally.
The deal is expected to close in the coming months provided the customary regulatory approvals are obtained during this period. This is likely to greatly enhance the reach of Paysafe in the European region and also help it to offer a wide variety of financial services apart from just payments.
