Payments Competition Heats Up as Adyen Confirms IPO

The payments technology space just keeps getting hotter. Last week, U.S. payments business PayPal bought iZettle, while today Dutch payments platform Adyen confirmed its plans to go public. These significant moves confirm that the large players in the space are getting larger. Today, Adyen confirmed plans for an initial public offering (IPO) as early as next month on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. In a statement released to Finextra , Adyen CEO <span style="display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: transparent; color: #333333; cursor: text; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">and co-founder Pieter van der Does said: We feel that we are still in the early stages of a remarkable journey. Our focus remains on building new functionality and on helping our merchants grow. This offering provides us with the freedom to keep building the company, while offering our shareholders a path to liquidity. Adyen will remain a company that is driven by a long-term vision and strategy. <span style="display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: transparent; color: #333333; cursor: text; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">According to a Reuters report , Adyen could have a valuation between $7 and $11 billion. In contrast, PayPal , which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker PYPL, has a market capitalization of $99.9 billion. Square , which is also a public company listed on the same exchange, has a market cap of $22 billion as of 3 PM ET today. And Stripe, as of 2016, had a valuation of $9.2 billion. Clearly, PayPal is at a huge advantage compared to its rivals. Of course, it’s important to note that PayPal has diversified into other lines of business (hello, Venmo) beyond payment processing, which none of its direct competitors has done yet. But, perhaps that’s the point. While Adyen and Stripe have been relatively contained in their core markets of payment processing technology, PayPal has aggressively -- through M&A -- diversified itself into much more. Fintech veteran Mike Dudas tweeted: Buying @braintree / @venmo for @davidmarcus and @paypal , especially in the face of comps such as a potential $10B IPO for @Adyen https://t.co/3mW2unrfin

— Mike Dudas (@mdudas) May 24, 2018 Last week, PayPal said it would purchase Swedish rival iZettle for $2.2 billion, only weeks after iZettle had announced plans to go public (more on this here ). This deal marks PayPal’s largest acquisition to date. The company, however, has always been an active buyer. PayPal purchased international money transfer company Xoom for $890 million in 2015, and in 2013 it purchased of Braintree (parent of P2P platform Venmo ) for $800 million. In fact, at the time, reports suggested that PayPal competitor Square, was also interested in buying Braintree. In contrast, Adyen has not inked any large deals recently. But, the company has an impressive roster of clients including AirBnB, Spotify, Uber and even eBay (which, in January chose Adyen over PayPal to process its payments). In 2017, Adyen generated $1.1 billion in annual revenue, a $400 million increase from the previous year, and processed $122 billion in volume for merchants in 2017, up 61% from 2016. Stripe and Square have remained relatively quiet in the M&A arena. In April Stripe CEO Patrick Collison told TechCrunch that it is not considering an IPO anytime soon. But all this activity in the payments ecosystem is likely to change that, perhaps by encouraging more M&A activity among the larger players, consolidation among the smaller ones and investments among VCs or PEs. <span style="display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: transparent; color: #333333; cursor: text; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Adyen did not respond to request for comment.

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Payments Competition Heats Up as Adyen Confirms IPO

IBM and Crédit Mutuel Demonstrate AI Can Help Bank Employees, Not Just Customers

PayPal’s Platform Strategy Brings It Closer to Banking Services

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