PYMNTS Innovation Investment Tracker

There’s lots of stuff published on who’s funding what across all technology sectors worldwide. We thought it would be useful to provide you with a weekly update on who’s investing what in the retail and commercial payments and financial services sectors.

Retail was king during the closing days of July, with retail payments taking in almost half the weeks’ investment activity.  Customer acquisition and loyalty for banking customers took in 77 percent of venture backed and strategic investment.  Lagging behind during the week were P2P, mobile money and POS. Ready for the rest in Innovation Investment, check out PYMNTS Innovation Investment tracker.

 

The Big Takeaways for Payments and Commerce | Week of July 25, 2014

  • $1.3 Billion in financial activity was observed across a variety of investment types – VC funding, private placements, etc.  Of that total, $153 Million was the driven by strategic or venture –backed investments. The biggest transaction was the acquisition of Jacobson Companies by Norbert Dentressanglefor $750 Million. The second was debt finance secured by Privlo Inc. of for $350 Million.

  • 40 percent of the week’s activity was concentrated on the retail payments side and most of it was related to banking .  On the commercial payments the only disclosed funding was that of the acquisiton of Jacobson Companies (logistics).
  • Venture backed and strategic investments on the retail payments side accounted for  $153M of the total investment activity in the fifth week of July. Of that, almost all was venture.
    • Interestingly, most of the venture and strategic backed investments were in the banking customer acquisition and loyalty areas accounting for 77 percent of the total. P2P,  mobile money, authentication/biometrics, and prepaid, and point of sale sytems reflected the least amount of investment activity this week.

  • The most active VCs included Apax Partners ($84 Million) and Fred Alger Management ($7.5 Million)

    • From a geographic perspective US was the most active region followed by Asia ex-China.
  • The median investment amount was $7.5 Million.

 The Retail and Commercial Payments Top 16

Here are the top 16 investments that drove 99 percent of the funding activity in the fifth week of July 2014.