Convera Concludes Western Union Business Solutions Deal

B2B FinTech Convera says it has completed its acquisition of Western Union Business Solutions (WUBS).

WUBS was acquired last year by Goldfinch Partners and The Baupost Group for $910 million and rebranded as Convera, a new standalone payments operation.

In a news release Monday (July 10), the company announced it had concluded the acquisition of its European business, thus marking the end of the transition from WUBS.

“We are delighted to formally complete this transition and incorporate all our European business into Convera,” said Convera CEO Patrick Gauthier. “The past two years have seen Convera transform substantially, building on the legacy of Western Union Business Solutions while positioning the company for growth in the digital age.”

In an interview with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster earlier this year — soon after Convera received its U.K. operating license — Gauthier discussed some of the complexities of doing business in Europe.

For example, due to the uniqueness of its model, Convera needed to acquire a payments license and MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) licenses covering those activities.

“In every jurisdiction we’ve needed to get two licenses,” Gauthier told Webster, “in every jurisdiction — a payments license, and a MiFID license for the hedging part of the business. There are not many businesses that combine payments and hedging in the ways we do.”

That combination, he said, provides the company with a competitive advantage, as Convera’s focus is on serving the CFOs and treasury operations of small-to-medium-size businesses (SMBs) with between $1 million and $10 billion in sales.

“We take the great unknowns and the fluctuation away from them and allow them to focus more on their businesses,” Gauthier said in a separate PYMNTS interview in 2022.

These companies span a wide range of industries, but they share a few commonalities: There’s at least some global component to their operations. It could be that they sell abroad, or that they buy from suppliers in other countries.

“Currency hedging, through forward contracts, remains a vital part of protecting firms’ balance sheets from volatile interest rates,” that report said.

Gautheir also told PYMNTS in January that his goal was to be ready to go public via an initial public offering (IPO) within three years.

“That doesn’t mean I’ll want to do an IPO in three years,” he said.

Rather, his ambition is instead to have the operating standards in place that one would expect from a publicly traded company.

Convera said Monday that with the acquisition finished, it will turn its attention toward investing in cross-border payments. According to the release, Convera reported more than half a billion in annual revenue and is “on track to outpace last year’s performance.”

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