Nairobi and Ireland-based DPO Group has acquired South Africa’s online payment processing firm PayFast in stock and cash options in a move to fulfill its pan-African consolidation dream.
There have been reports that DPO Group and its investor Apis Partners are consolidating payment platforms for a huge pan-African exit or international IPO.
“We’re excited to announce that PayFast has been acquired by DPO Group, Africa’s leading Payment Service Provider (PSP). The merger is a significant milestone for PayFast and for the payments and ecommerce industries in South Africa,” PayFast announced in a statement.
According to PayFast, merging with the Group will allow it to integrate its processing and facilitation capability and expertise with DPO’s range of payment services, which has huge geographical reach across Africa.
PayFast sees this as an opportunity that allows it to continue to improve and widen the range of services on offer to its customers in South Africa and across the continent.
Launched in 2007 by Jonathan Smit and Andy Higgins, PayFast has become South Africas go to online payments gateway making it safer and faster for ecommerce businesses in the country to receive payments.
“While we have grown a lot since then, this role of e-commerce enabler remains a core part of who we are as a business, and one that we believe is shared by DPO,” said PayFast in a statement.
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For PayFast merchants the merger will not affect the payment processing of their account and any existing agreements between merchants and PayFast will remain unchanged. Buyers will also continue to enjoy the same secure and seamless payments experience that PayFast has come to stand for over the years.
We look forward to this next exciting chapter and embrace the future potential for growth and innovation the ecommerce and payments industries hold. We couldn’t have done this without the support of our merchants who have trusted us with their payments. We thank you for your ongoing support and look forward to being of continued service to you as we enter this next exciting phase of our journey.
PayFast brings over 55,000 merchants to DPO Group which now has over 100 000 merchants across 18 African markets. With the acquisition, DPO is looking to expand to 10 more Africa countries including Angola, Mozambique, Senegal, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and South Sudan.
Two years ago, DPO Group received a second investment of $5M from the UK based private equity fund, Apis Partners after its initial $10M investment made last year.
Earlier DPO Group Chairman, Offer Gat, told TechMoran “ The group strategy is to provide a unified payments solution all across Africa. SA is a major market and as a leading payments group we identified the opportunity and decided to generate this market now. In East Africa, after 10 years, we established ourselves as a leading payments services provider, it is true that this market is far from been a mature payments market, however, we sure that we will lead the market in the coming months to a new era where online payments are highly common.
