PF PayU Beefing up Cross-Border Payments with Acquisition

Citing enormous opportunity in cross-border payments, payments provider PayU announced this week that it plans to acquire Israeli technology provider ZOOZ.

Headquartered in The Netherlands, PayU says it supports more than 300,000 merchants in Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. The company also operates as a payment facilitator. ZOOZ bills itself as an “open payments platform” that enables merchants to offer alternative local payment methods in addition to global brands.

PayU said that its vision of the combined company includes plans to build a modular platform to support global payments.

The two companies have worked together for a year, with ZOOZ designing a platform based on PayU’s payments infrastructure called PayU Hub.

“PayU is one of the most active investors in the fintech space and we are always looking for opportunities to innovate and support our merchant clients to grow,” Laurent le Moal, CEO of PayU, said in a press release.

“Today’s announcement is a great illustration of this philosophy in action and we are pleased to be welcoming the ZOOZ team further into the PayU fold. By working together to create the first ‘Payment OS’ platform we will advance PayU’s mission to help build a world without financial borders”

The company cited an Accenture report that estimates the market for cross-border payments will reach $994 billion in two years, with two-thirds of the activity within “high-growth” markets such as Asia and Latin America.

Just last week, another cross-border payments technology provider, PPRO, announced it had received an investment from PayPal. In that announcement, PayPal highlighted its own interest in allowing consumers to “shop seamlessly across borders.”

PayU’s acquisition of ZOOZ is expected to close this summer, according to the press release.