JPMorgan to boost payments business with Renovite purchase

Source: Reuters

JPMorgan has clinched a deal to buy U.S. firm Renovite Technologies to expand its payments processing business and win market share in a lucrative industry where big banks face tough competition from fintech disrupters.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

California-based Renovite, which has a presence in both India and Britain, provides cloud-native technology to optimize payments processing through a wide range of products and has about 140 employees, of which roughly 125 are engineers.

"This acquisition will help us achieve our goal to develop the next-generation payments processing platform globally," said Max Neukirchen, Global Head of Payments & Commerce Solutions at JPMorgan.

Renovite's founder and chief executive Viren Rana called JPMorgan's payments division a "natural home" for the company's people and technology.

The deal will give JPMorgan a broader and more efficient payments platform that will offer clients processing credit and debit card transactions around the world more methods of payments.

It will also help it compete with fintech challengers such as Stripe and Adyen which are at the forefront of digital payments technology.

JPMorgan said in January it would spend more than $12 billion on technology in 2022 betting on cloud and modern engineering practices as well as AI and machine learning to bolster its digital offering.

Its swoop on Renovite follows a move earlier this year to buy a 49% stake in Athens-based payments fintech Viva Wallet and a previous purchase of a majority stake in German car giant Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) payments business ahead of a planned rollout of in-car technology that allows drivers to automatically pay for fuel or tolls.

The Wall Street bank has been on an acquisition spree over the past 18 months, with about 30 deals last year including the purchase of British digital wealth manager Nutmeg and U.S. provider of ESG metrics OpenInvest.