London, Ontario’s Paystone is acquiring Ackroo, a loyalty marketing, payments, and point-of-sale technology services provider.
Ackroo, listed on the Toronto Venture Exchange as AKR, is being acquired at a price of $0.15 per share, or about $21 million, the company announced this month.
“I am very happy for our shareholders, employees and clients,” stated Steve Levely, chief executive of Ackroo.
“The goal at Ackroo since I took over in May 2014 was to accrue value through market consolidation until we were consolidated ourselves,” Levely went on. “Ten years later, here we are with a business that has scaled by combining smaller adjacent software and payment organizations into one combined entity which has delivered both financial and functional success.”
According to Levely, the board believed, “at this stage of the business, and given the current state of the capital markets,” that this move was “in the best interest of the company.”
The manoeuvre “creates a liquidity event for shareholders while positioning Ackroo’s product, team and clients to be able to benefit from a much larger private organization,” he said.
The transaction will be carried out by way of a court-approved plan of arrangement under the Canada Business Corporations Act.
Moving forward, Levely is optimistic.
“While I am proud of what we have done to get to this point, I am equally excited for what is next for our staff and valued clients,” Levely said.
The Ackroo chief believes that Paystone, through acquiring competitors and integrating value-added software solutions, is strategically consolidating the industry.
“Bringing all of these assets and tools together under one organization to further optimize and scale is an exciting next step for all involved,” said Levely.
Founded in 2009, Paystone’s suite of automated payment processing, customer loyalty programs, gift card solutions, and reputation marketing software is used at 35,000 merchant locations across Canada and the United States, which collectively process $10 billion a year in bankcard volume.
The growing fintech company employs 150 workers.
In 2022, Paystone acquired Canadian Payment Services to become Canada’s largest bank-independent payments provider. That acquisition was the sixth addition to Paystone’s portfolio of acquisitions, having acquired five other businesses in the prior two years, including Montreal’s DataCandy and Vancouver’s NiceJob.
Ackroo began trading publicly in 2012.
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