PayPal is looking to steal a march on financial services firms in the underbanked bill payment space by acquiring North American processor TIO for $233 million.
Vancouver-based TIO serves underbanked customers through a network of 900 unmanned kiosk and across 65,000 retail walk-in locations as well as online and mobile. The company has 10,000 supported billers and processed more than $7 billion in consumer bill payments in fiscal 2016 from 14 million consumer bill pay accounts.
The all-cash deal represents a premium of 22.6% to the 20-trading day volume-weighted average price from 9 January when negotiations commenced.
Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal, says: “By acquiring TIO and integrating bill payment into our global payments platform, PayPal adds another key service in our efforts to become a part of a consumer’s everyday financial life. Worldwide, more than 2 billion people do not have affordable access to basic financial services, making it difficult and expensive for consumers to carry out basic financial tasks, including bill payment. TIO’s digital platform, and physical network of agent locations make paying bills simpler, faster, and more affordablel.”