Paysafe to Acquire SafetyPay

Paysafe signed a definitive agreement to acquire SafetyPay for USD 441 million

2021-08-17

Paysafe (NYSE:PSFE), a leading specialized payments platform, announced yesterday that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SafetyPay, an Armilar Venture Partners III portfolio company, for USD 441 million in an all-cash transaction.

Armilar invested in US-based SafetyPay in 2008 – about one year after it was founded as an eCommerce payment platform designed to empower online shoppers, merchants and banks to transact safely – and has been one of its main shareholders, and active Board member, ever since.

Currently led by Gustavo Ruiz, the company went through very significant growth since inception and now has a presence in 11 Latin American countries and several European countries, and operates via an unparalleled network of banks, with over 180,000 cash collection points. It serves nearly 300 merchants primarily in the travel, entertainment, and digital goods industries. In the first half of 2020, as the Covid pandemic hit hard the travel and leisure industries – which comprised more than 50% of SafetyPay's business –SafetyPay’s management was able to successfully turn threat into opportunity in just a few months, by steering the business towards markets less affected by the pandemic, resulting in an impressive growth in sales volume and profitability when compared with pre-Covid KPI's.  

This valuation represents a fund returner for AVP III (a "dragon", as it is known in the VC industry), the fourth for Armilar, which marks an important milestone for us: with it, Armilar will now showcase one dragon in each fund under management that is older than 5 years – a key testament to our long-term work in producing value to the investors in our Venture Capital funds.  

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Read the full press release from Paysafe here.

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