Integrated payments company Shift4 acquired the Swiss company Online Payments Group for $125.9 million in September, according to its most recent quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Allentown, Pennsylvania-based Shift4’s acquisition of the European payment service provider arms the payments company with capabilities that further its global ambitions, CEO Jared Isaacman said last week. Shift4 paid a mix of cash and stock, including potential contingent payments, for the acquisition, according to the filing. 

Shift4 specializes in offering payments services to the restaurant, hospitality, sports stadium, and casino industries, pitting it against rivals Toast and FreedomPay, among others, in those sectors. Specifically, 100,000 restaurants now use Shift4 payments technology, Isaacman said during an appearance Wednesday at the Credit Suisse annual technology conference.

With the Online Payments Group acquisition, Shift4 aims to compete with other major payments companies such as Stripe and Adyen, Isaacman suggested.

Shift4 had about 1,753 employees as of the end of last year, per the company’s annual filing. Nate Hirshberg, Shift4’s VP of marketing, declined to comment on Online Payments Group’s headcount, but said in an email that Shift4 expects to grow the Online Payments Group team. 

The acquisition enables Shift4 to offer e-commerce merchants in the U.S. and Europe online checkout via an easy integration capability and gives the company the means to process payments in Europe, Isaacman said during a webcast of the company’s third-quarter earnings call in November.

It’s the most recent acquisition for Shift4, which has made several this year. Isaacman, who founded the company in 1999, said earlier this year the company aimed to pursue more acquisitions.

The company disclosed it made six other acquisitions in the quarter: Shift4 also acquired Pinnacle Hospitality Systems, FPOS Group, Retail Control Solutions and three other restaurant technology companies, per the company quarterly filing. Hirshberg declined to identify the names of the restaurant tech companies. Shift4 made all the acquisitions for $80.3 million in a mix of cash and stock, including possible contingent payments, the filing said.

In March, Shift4 announced that it was buying Finaro, a Tel Aviv-based financial services firm.

With the Online Payments Group and Finaro acquisitions, Shift4 executives believe the company is “well situated to cover most of Europe and the U.K.,” but has “plans for many other geographies,” Hirshberg said in an email.

The Online Payments Group acquisition brings tech capabilities, such as recurring billing and fraud protection, that will help Shift4 attract and integrate new customers at a faster pace, Shift4 executives said.

With those new international capabilities, benefits from the acquisition will be apparent in the fourth quarter, Isaacman said last week. 

OPG’s capabilities are complementary to the back-end banking and settlement tools that Finaro possesses, Isaacman said. The Finaro acquisition is expected to close early in the first quarter, Isaacman said. That acquisition has taken more time due to a Russian oligarch’s ownership stake in Finaro and European regulatory approval.

By bringing those pieces together to serve U.S. and European markets, “we’re starting to get into that rare air” with the “Stripes, Adyens of the world that can have that global commerce capability,” Isaacman said.

Although Shift4 won’t “surprise anyone with new markets” in the fourth quarter, the company in early 2023 will explore organic expansion into new markets, “and that might change where we choose to allocate some capital in the year ahead,” Isaacman said.

By Caitlin Mullen on Dec 5, 2022
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