Payments fintech GoCardless has been courting buyers, with Dutch fintech Mollie the current frontrunner, according to people familiar with the matter.
The UK fintech has been in discussions with multiple potential acquirers since the start of the year, Sifted has learned, with Swedish fintech Trustly at one point entering talks to buy GoCardless.
However, Trustly has since walked away from the deal, one source said, with Mollie’s acquisition of GoCardless set to close as soon as next month. Mollie, Trustly and GoCardless declined to comment.
Founded in 2011 by Hiroki Takeuchi, Matt Robinson and Tom Blomfield, London-based GoCardless has raised more than $600m in funding from investors including Passion Capital, Accel and Balderton.
CEO Takeuchi told Sifted in February the fintech — which reported a pre-tax loss of £34.5m for results covering the year ended 30 June 2024 compared to £77.6m the year prior — was targeting profitability by the end of this year. The payments fintech primarily makes money by taking a transaction fee for facilitating direct debit payments for businesses.
GoCardless was last valued at $2.1bn after raising a $312m Series G founding round in 2022 led by Permira. As part of that funding round, Mollie CEO Koen Köppen, who at the time was chief technology officer at Klarna, joined GoCardless’ board as an independent director.
It’s not clear at what price tag GoCardless is getting sold at. But the fintech is seeking an acquisition at a time when investor sentiment has shifted to focus on those operating in the black.
While that’s enabled fintechs such as Revolut and Monzo to raise at significant valuations, many fintechs aren’t able to sustain the sky high valuations they obtained in the post-pandemic funding boom. Fellow UK payments fintech TrueLayer, for instance, lost its unicorn valuation last year.
A tie-up between Mollie and GoCardless would mark one of the most high-profile acquisitions in recent years. In the first six months of this year, there have been 62 fintech acquisitions — a slight uptick from the same period last year, when there were 57 acquisitions and buyouts.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/gocardless-acquisition/
