Payments & Fintech Acquisitions in Illinois

Flywire Corporation (Nasdaq: FLYW) has acquired Sertifi, a hospitality-focused SaaS and payments platform, for $330 million funded with cash and debt. The acquisition expands Flywire's travel payments footprint into large branded, luxury and boutique hotel subsegments by adding Sertifi's hotel software integrations (used across ~20,000 locations) and is expected to add roughly $35-40M of revenue in FY2025.

Accel-KKR has completed the carveout acquisition of Accertify from American Express, making the fraud-prevention business an independent private company. Accertify will remain headquartered in Itasca, Illinois and will focus on accelerating growth and product innovation in fraud prevention, chargeback management, and payment gateway solutions with support from Accel-KKR.

Stax, the Orlando-based all-in-one payments technology provider, has acquired CardX, a Chicago-based automated credit-card surcharging platform. The acquisition integrates CardX's compliance and dynamic-fee capabilities into Stax's payments stack, expands Stax's footprint with a new Chicago office, and brings CardX's ~2,600 merchant customers onto the Stax network.

NMI, a global commerce enablement and payments technology platform, received a significant growth-equity investment from Insight Partners, joining existing investors Francisco Partners and Great Hill Partners. The company will remain led by CEO Vijay Sondhi and management (who also reinvested); the capital will be used to accelerate product development, global expansion, and NMI's acquisition strategy.

U.S. Bank has agreed to acquire Bento Technologies (Bento for Business), a fintech company that provides card-based payments and automated expense management for small and mid-size businesses. The acquisition is intended to integrate Bento’s accounts-payable and expense management capabilities with U.S. Bank’s existing payments and receivables solutions to offer a more comprehensive cash-management experience for SMB clients.

Enova International has acquired Pangea Universal Holdings, a Chicago-based mobile-first international money transfer platform that serves transfers from the U.S. to about 40 countries with a focus on Latin America and Asia. Enova will leverage its AI/ML, analytics and online financial-services capabilities to expand into the remittance market while Pangea's CEO Nishu Thukral will continue to lead the business.

Blackhawk Network has completed the acquisition of National Gift Card (NGC), a Crystal Lake, Illinois-based provider of technology-enabled prepaid and gift card solutions. The seller was Longshore Capital Partners (in conjunction with LaSalle Capital); the deal expands Blackhawk's prepaid, fulfillment and program-management capabilities and integrates NGC's fulfillment operations and customer base into Blackhawk's global branded-payments platform.

Celero Commerce, a PE-backed vertically focused commerce solutions provider, acquired TransNational Payments, a provider of electronic payments technology and business-management SaaS. The deal expands Celero's merchant and financial-institution footprint—bringing the combined company to roughly 40,000 merchants and more than $14 billion in card volume processed annually—and adds proprietary SaaS capabilities and distribution channels to Celero's platform.

Payroc (Payroc WorldAccess, LLC) has acquired Blackline Partners, LLC (d/b/a eConduit), a cloud API provider that enables software companies to accept EMV card-present payments across multiple countries. The acquisition fills a gap in Payroc's card-present and global integrated processing capabilities, giving its ISV and POS partners a single cloud integration point to many payment terminals and expanding Payroc's integrated payments offering.

Blackhawk Network has completed its acquisition of SVM Cards, a provider of physical and digital open- and closed-loop prepaid and gift card solutions. The deal expands Blackhawk's prepaid and B2B incentives capabilities by adding closed-loop fuel card issuance and broadening its incentives and corporate gift card offerings.