Certainly, the universe of the payment gives rise to the passions. The first american bank in terms of assets, JP Morgan Chase, announced on Tuesday evening plans to acquire california-based company WePay, which provides a payment solution platforms of crowdfunding as the number one in crowdfunding GoFundMe and YouCaring or boxes of software such as accounting remote FreshBooks or that of email marketing, Constant Contact. This is the first purchase of the scale of JP Morgan in Fintech: according to the Wall Street Journal, the price would be higher than the valuation of WePay at its last fund-raising in 2015, at which had participated in the funds of venture capital FTV and the japanese firm Rakuten (Priceminister), or $ 220 million.
This summer, the american bank was interested in the payment system british Worldpay eventually bought out by Vantiv Inc for 8 billion pounds (about 9 billion euros).
Founded in 2008 in Silicon Valley by two young people of 23 years old at the time, Bill Clerico and Rich Aberman, WePay is much smaller : competitor of the Dutch Adyen and, especially, of the american Stripe, or Braintree (PayPal), the company employs 200 people and provides a payment interface key-in-hand very well appreciated for small and medium-sized enterprises. Customer segment strategic for JP Morgan, which has 4 million of SMES potentially interested in the brick payment of WePay.
“Chase and WePay will allow merchants to accept payments instantly and be paid more quickly so you never lose a sale “, argued the two companies in their joint communiqué.
Partnerships and fundraising
However, this is the first initiative of JP Morgan in Fintech : the bank led by Jamie Dimon is also a partner of Bill.com, a platform for management of invoices and payments for the companies, in which it comes to invest during a round table giant $ 100 million, together with the fund of singapore Temasek. She has also participated in may in the exercise of 50 million of LevelUp, an app for ordering and payment for restaurants and cafés. In August, it announced the extension of its collaboration with the website of SME loans OnDeck Capital which he uses the technology to provide an answer online in a few minutes to the loan applications of € 200,000 maximum.
According to co-founder of WePay, Bill Clerico, who was a ephemeral as a corporate banker with Jefferries, JP Morgan will leave its autonomy and brand the company in Redwood City that will double in size over the next 12 months.
“With Chase behind us […] we will become quickly one of the companies payment technologies that are better funded in the world and beyond we [him] will serve as a platform for increasing its presence in the Fintech and Silicon Valley,” writes the director-general in a blog post.
