Montreal's Optimal Payments has signed an agreement to acquire Detroit-based National Processing Services (NPS) for US$15 million in cash.
By closing, NPS will have approximately 4500 small merchant accounts that generate in excess of $1 billion in annual credit and debit card processing volume. Following the buy-out, Optimal Payments will have annual electronic cheque and credit card processing volume of approximately $2 billion.
Under the acquisition, Laith Yaldoo, current president of NPS, will continue to operate the business on a full-time basis. He comments: "With Optimal's resources and financial strength, we will be able to leverage infrastructure and sales channel strength to accelerate the growth of our business."
Optimal Payments, which has operations in both the US and UK, says the acquisition is a part of its strategy of growing and diversifying its payments processing and financial services platform.
The transaction is expected to close on July 1st 2004.