PayU Buys ZOOZ, Boosting Its Investments To More Than $350M

PayU, the online payment company owned by Naspers, announced Monday (July 23) the acquisition of payments technology platform ZOOZ.

In a press release, PayU said the price tag was undisclosed, but that the deal supports PayU’s expansion into high growth markets. With the deal, PayU said it has invested and/or made acquisitions totaling more than $350 million since 2016 when it began to expand across the globe.  A source told Reuters the deal was valued at between $80 million and $100 million. “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,” said Laurent le Moal, chief executive of PayU, in the 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.”

Combined, the companies will work to create a global payments infrastructure of the future that includes developing a payment OS platform that can support the needs of ever-changing merchants and the broader payments industry. The platform will include fraud management and real-time reporting.

PayU had already been partners with ZOOZ — that gave PayU merchants access to 2.3 billion new customers via the PayU Hub platform, which was designed by ZOOZ.  As part of the deal, which the companies expect to close this summer, ZOOZ’s co-founder and CEO Oren Levy and CTO Ronen Morecki will become part of PayU’s Global Leadership team, focusing on tech and business development. ZOOZ’s 70-strong team of technical and payments experts will also become part of the PayU team, boosting the business’ technical capabilities, noted the companies.

“After a year-long, productive partnership, our shared vision to create a new global standard in payments infrastructure is becoming a reality with PayU’s acquisition of ZOOZ,” Levy said in the same press release. “The unique contribution we bring to PayU is an advanced technological layer which not only helps merchants worldwide to upscale their operations and provide a better customer experience, but also offers analytics and optimization capabilities that equip them with unprecedented insights.”