PayPoint has bought two card payments and card terminal leasing businesses – Handepay and Merchant Rentals – from a consortium of private investors for £70m.
The acquisitions will create a combined national card payments business with a customer base of over 30,000 SMEs, spanning the grocery, auto trade, clothing, household goods and hospitality sectors.
Mark Latham, currently Chief Commercial Officer at Handepay, will join the PayPoint Executive Board as Card Services Director, responsible for the combined cards portfolio. Ian Kennedy, currently Sales Director at Handepay, will join the business as Sales Director leading both the PayPoint and Handepay sales teams, reporting to Ben Ford, PayPoint’s Retail Services Director. Andy Peake will continue as CEO of Handepay until completion, and then will act as a consultant to PayPoint.
Nick Wiles, Chief Executive Officer of PayPoint plc, said: “Our acquisition of Handepay and Merchant Rentals will significantly increase our card payments capability and broaden our SME customer base. This important step refocuses PayPoint towards a core growth area and creates synergies through cross selling of other PayPoint services and leveraging the scale of the combined business.
“Handepay has delivered a resilient performance through Covid-19, through the breadth of its customer base and strong recovery of active merchants after the first lockdown, and has a proactive plan in response to the most recent national restrictions. I am equally pleased to welcome the Handepay management team into the PayPoint Group and look forward to working with them as we deliver on the exciting potential of the combined card business.”
