European point of sale provider SumUp acquires customer loyalty startup Fivestars for $317M – TechCrunch

SumUp, a European-based competitor to Sq., PayPal/iZettle and others that present mobile-powered card readers and different gross sales know-how to retailers and small companies, has made an acquisition within the U.S. to dig deeper into that market, and to develop the sorts of providers that it offers to clients globally.

The corporate has acquired Fivestars, which offers loyalty, advertising and marketing, funds and different providers to small retailers, utilized by some 70 million customers and 12,000 companies within the U.S.. London-based SumUp mentioned it will likely be paying $317 million in a mixture of money and inventory for the San Francisco startup.

That could be a bump up on the startup’s valuation as a non-public firm. In line with PitchBook, FiveStars — which was initially incubated in Y Combinator and later backed by VCs that included Salt Companions, Lightspeed, DCM Ventures, Menlo Ventures and HarbourVest Companions — was final valued at $285 million post-money when it raised a Sequence D of $52.5 million a yr in the past, in October 2020.

It’s not clear why Fivestars offered up, nor whether or not it was proactively approached or on the lookout for a purchaser, however you possibly can’t assist however marvel what sort of an impression the final yr and a half, the place lots of people turned away from procuring in individual as a result of pandemic, had on the corporate’s enterprise — which is basically predicated on in-person transactions.

On a extra optimistic observe, SumUp shopping for Fivestars now represents how it will likely be doubling down on the chance forward now that folks and retailers are coming again into the bodily procuring fold.

SumUp bought its begin in 2012 as one of many many Sq. clones rising out of Europe at a time when the U.S. firm had but to develop exterior of its dwelling market. Since then it has diversified into on-line funds, invoicing and different providers wanted by retailers and different small companies. And it has grown. Immediately the corporate has greater than 3 million service provider customers in 34 markets, scale that helped it elevate almost $900 million in debt earlier this yr to gas additional enlargement.

That funding has been used each to proceed constructing out SumUp’s platform and footprint in present markets, in addition to to maneuver into new territories.

Though SumUp has in concept been lively within the U.S. for a few years, its presence there’s modest, admitted Andrew Helms, SumUp’s managing director within the nation. So this acquisition — SumUp’s first within the nation — shall be used to get a deeper foothold in that market.

Fivestars is a well-liked product, and SumUp hopes to leverage that present enterprise, which Fivestars says drives greater than $3 billion in gross sales and 100 million transactions per yr, to develop its personal relationships with retailers, particularly signing them as much as SumUp’s personal card readers and different gross sales know-how. Helms confirmed that the plan shall be to maintain Fivestars’ branding for now and to work on integrating its product extra carefully into SumUp’s platform.

Victor Ho, Fivestars’ co-founder and CEO, may also be staying on, together with the remainder of the corporate’s SF-based staff.

“We based Fivestars to provide small companies the chance to thrive within the digital financial system and over time, we’ve achieved simply that,” Ho mentioned in an announcement. “Understanding that SumUp shares this mission, it was a simple choice to companion, and collectively, we stay up for supporting a retail market that champions small enterprise success.”

Buying Fivestars additionally makes numerous sense within the context of how SumUp has grown. A part of its technique has all the time been to pursue inorganic enlargement, and over time that has together with merging with Payleven, one other Sq. clone initially incubated by Berlin’s Rocket Web; and shopping for and integrating Shoplo to provide its retailers the flexibility to promote throughout a number of marketplaces on-line.

Notably, SumUp didn’t have a loyalty product earlier than this, so there’ll seemingly be alternatives to deliver Fivestars’ know-how for the primary time into different markets exterior of the U.S., reminiscent of in Europe and Latin America, the place SumUp is already lively.