Metavante Corporation, the financial technology subsidiary of Marshall & Ilsley Corporation (NYSE: MI), today announced the acquisition of Valutec Card Solutions, of Franklin, Tenn.
The company will continue to operate under the Valutec name, and will become a Metavante company.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The purchase is not expected to have a material impact on the financial results of Metavante or Marshall & Ilsley Corporation (M&I).
Valutec is a leading provider of closed-loop, in-store gift and loyalty card solutions to small and medium-sized businesses, including hosted account management, reporting capabilities, plastic card design and production, along with card program merchandising products. Metavante already offers a variety of open-loop, network-branded card solutions.
"Valutec presents Metavante with an additional opportunity to extend its prepaid and gift card solutions technology, support, development and sales channels into another market," said Frank Martire, Metavante president and chief executive officer. "Acquiring Valutec helps round out Metavante's ability to offer a wider selection of prepaid gift card options to our merchant customer base," he said.
Through the Valutec acquisition, current Metavante financial institution clients will also be able to offer merchant-branded cards and services to their merchant customers, deepening those relationships and helping to increase the institution's profitability.
"Merchant-branded cards help create and increase customer loyalty, and an increasing number of small to medium-sized merchants are viewing these programs as an attractive and effective sales, marketing and customer retention tool," said Frank D'Angelo, group president, Metavante Payment Solutions Group. "Offering Metavante clients closed-loop, prepaid card programs in addition to our network-branded open-loop cards not only helps their merchant customers create customer loyalty and increase customer retention, it also provides Metavante with a predictable, rising revenue stream," he said.
According to Bill Horne, Valutec president and chief executive officer, the in-house gift card capabilities of Valutec will blend well with existing Metavante card solutions. "We are very pleased to join with Metavante and offer merchants another payment option to their customers," he said.