TSYS buying firm called Cayan for just over $1 billion

Credit-card and payment processor TSYS has taken a major acquisition bite once again, this time purchasing payment technology firm Cayan for $1 billion and change — all of it in cash.

Columbus-based TSYS announced the pending acquisition Monday, saying its board of directors approved the $1.05 billion transaction, which it expects to close sometime in the first quarter of 2018, which means it would be no later than the end of March. The deal must receive regulatory approvals and move through the typical closing process.

Payment company Cayan LLC, which is owned by Parthenon Capital Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm, now serves more than 70,000 merchants and 100-plus integrated payment solution partners in the U.S. It uses a system called “Genius.” Parthenon has owned Cayan for nearly five years and had been seeking a buyer for the company for several months, according to media and trade publications.

“The acquisition of Cayan strategically complements our merchant goals to become a leading payment solutions provider to small and medium size businesses in the U.S. by delivering ‘best in class’ services and solutions,” Troy Woods, TSYS chairman, president and chief executive officer, said Monday in a statement. “TSYS already has tremendous scale and distribution capabilities. The addition of Cayan’s unified commerce solutions puts us in a strong competitive position to jointly offer a broader set of value-add products and services to our partners and merchants.”

Henry Helgeson, co-founder and CEO of Cayan, also stated that TSYS is a solid fit for his firm and that he is excited about Cayan delivering its own “innovative products” to even more customers.

“Cayan and TSYS are aligned in our strategy to provide cutting-edge payment solutions and a robust product offering to merchants across the U.S.,” Helgeson said.

This is the third company that TSYS has purchased since 2013 for $1 billion or more. The first was Austin, Texas-based NetSpend, a prepaid marketing and distribution firm that it bought for $1.4 billion in 2013 and is now a TSYS subsidiary. The second and largest at $2.35 billion, and completed in early 2016, was New York-based TransFirst, a merchant specialty firm that has been folded into TSYS’ own merchant operation.

Headquartered in downtown Columbus, TSYS employs about 11,500 worldwide, with nearly 5,000 of those in Columbus. It racked up revenue of $4.2 billion in 2016 while processing 25.5 billion transactions. It does business in 13 countries.

TSYS said Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Greenhill & Co., LLC are the Columbus firm’s financial advisers in the acquisition, and Alston & Bird LLP is the legal adviser. Financial Technology Partners LP is the financial adviser and Kirkland & Ellis LLP is the legal adviser for Cayan.

This story was originally published December 18, 2017 at 12:24 PM with the headline "TSYS buying firm called Cayan for just over $1 billion."