Sage Confirms Its Selling Its U.S. Payments Unit

Sage Group, the U.K. software company, is putting its U.S. unit up for sale after completing a review of the business.

According to a report in Bloomberg News, Sage confirmed its U.S. division Sage Payment Solutions, which was created to help merchants process and manage credit card and mobile payments, is being sold and is now being treated as a discontinued operation.

Sage Group noted the payment businesses in the U.K., Ireland and South Africa will remain part of the company. Sage also said it’s monitoring the impact from the U.K’s exit from the European Union. The U.K. government is aiming to cut annual net immigration from levels that are almost a record.

”We’d love to be able to fish in a much bigger pond,” Chief Executive Officer Stephen Kelly said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We’d love to get Indian, Chinese and American talent, and that’s much more difficult in the current environment.”

Bloomberg noted that people familiar with the matter said in December that Sage Payment Solution was getting interest from Worldpay Group Plc, EVO Payments International LLC and Global Payments Inc.

At the same time that Sage is looking to sell its U.S.-based payments unit, the company has been engaging in small buys. In March, for example, Sage gained full ownership of Fairsail, a U.K. software company, and inked a deal to buy Compass, the San Francisco startup focused on analytics.

Kelly told Bloomberg that Sage plans to grow organically via buys. In the U.S., the focus will remain on investments that help it get more small- and medium-sized businesses to use its cloud software. And in December, reports surfaced that Sage was mulling a sale of its U.S. payments unit.