NAPLES, Fla.–ACI Worldwide is buying Western Union’s bill pay solution, Speedpay, for $750 million in cash.
According to ACI, the deal will unite two leading bill pay portfolios and serve more than 4,000 customers across the country across a variety of industry segments. ACI said in its statement the deal will give it an opportunity to accelerate innovation through more spending on research and development.
The companies said a unified bill payment platform will be developed to support billions of transactions.
"This acquisition reinforces ACI's 'any payment, every possibility' vision and accelerates our ability to capitalize on the growing global payment transaction opportunity over the next five years," said Phil Heasley, ACI's president and CEO, in a statement.
The transaction will allow Western Union to concentrate its resources on its cross-border money movement strategies and to sell off a non-core asset for the benefit of its shareholders, according to Hikmet Ersek, Western Union's CEO. "Our strategy remains focused on expanding our digital services, leveraging our platform to unlock new cross-border, cross-currency payments opportunities, and generating additional operating efficiencies," said Ersek in a statement.
In 2018, the Speedpay business generated more than $350 million in revenue and $90 million in adjusted earnings.