U.S. Bank Subsidiary Acquires B2B Payments Firm CenPOS

Elavon, a subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp (U.S. Bank), has acquired B2B payments software company CenPOS, the firms revealed on Thursday (Jan. 10).

According to a press release, Elavon will integrate CenPOS’ B2B payments functionality into its existing global payment solutions, which will enable companies to adopt payment software that has payment acceptance and processing functionality embedded within the solution. CenPOS targets large enterprises in the travel, entertainment and automotive verticals with its software.

“More and more, businesses are choosing their payment provider based on the software solutions they use to manage other parts of their operations,” said Elavon CEO Jamie Walker in a statement. “With this acquisition, customers of both companies will benefit from the strengths and opportunities these organizations offer in important industry segments.”

The companies noted that the acquisition closed earlier in the week, and declined to release financial details.

U.S. Bank has made a series of moves in the B2B payments space, including the launch of the Disbursements via Zelle solution that allows corporate clients to use Zelle, as well as Supplier Prefer Pay, which streamlines the supplier onboarding process to facilitate electronic vendor payments.

“Organizations are looking for payment solutions that solve real-life challenges,” said U.S. Bank’s Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer Dominic Venturo in a statement at the time.

In November, U.S. Bank announced a partnership with Mansfield Energy, targeting another area of B2B payments: fleet cards and spend. That collaboration sees Mansfield providing mobile refueling solutions to existing users of U.S. Bank’s Voyager fleet card solution.

Last year, U.S. Bancorp Chief Financial Officer Terry Dolan spoke with reporters about anti-money laundering (AML) regulations imposed on the institution.

“We do hope that, and believe that, as we get into the late second quarter, early third quarter, that the regulators will now start to … make judgments with respect to sustainability,” said Dolan. “Our expectation is that we will get out of the consent order in 2018.”