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Direct Pay Online continues acquisition drive

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 18 Aug 2017
Peter Harvey, MD of DPO SA.
Peter Harvey, MD of DPO SA.

Direct Pay Online Group (DPO) has acquired Virtual Card Services (VCS) South Africa for an undisclosed amount.

The new acquisition marks the completion of DPO's purchase of the VCS Group, after already previously acquiring VCS Namibia and VCS Botswana.

DPO plans to merge both VCS SA and recently acquired PayThru with PayGate to create a consolidated payments service provider (PSP).

In 2016, DPO began its Southern African expansion by merging with PayGate, a South African online payments processor with over 15 years of experience and gateway integration to banks in 24 African markets.

In March this year, the group expanded into Botswana and Namibia with the acquisition of VCS subsidiaries in both countries, and in June, announced the acquisition of PayThru SA.

"We are excited to finally have VCS SA on board," says DPO group CEO Eran Feinstein.

"By merging VCS and PayThru SA with PayGate, we will be able to position ourselves as the largest PSP in Africa serving over 20 000 merchants. With every acquisition we make, our merchants across the continent benefit by receiving an unparalleled offering of services and geographical exposure. I believe we are well on our way to providing one payment solution across Africa.

VCS has over 20 years of experience in developing and implementing credit, debit and smart card processing systems for major card issuers in SA.

DPO SA MD Peter Harvey says the company is committed to Africa and plans to "incorporate in every country in Africa and offer a truly African payment solution".

"We already have 'boots on the ground' in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and SA. Our group Africa headquarters is in Nairobi and our SADEC headquarters is in Cape Town.

"We will be opening our West Africa regional offices before the end of this year. The game plan is to provide a truly pan-African payment solution to merchants wanting to do business in and across Africa," notes Harvey.

He says the PayGate, PayThru and DPO teams have already been integrated.

"We have made amazing progress with the integration of the companies into the DPO group at a technical, people and operational level. This has been largely due to the commitment of all the people involved from all the merged companies," adds Harvey.

DPO group chairman Offer Gat says the group has been in talks with VCS SA regarding the acquisition for quite some time.

"The late CEO, Gordon Ashby, was instrumental to this deal and it is unfortunate that he is not present to witness its fulfilment. We hope to continue the legacy he built," adds Gat.

Harvey says it is an exciting time to be in fintech and Africa.

"We are seeing a huge growth in non-cash payment processing across Africa, largely due to the explosion in the number of Africans accessing the Internet via their mobile devices."

Virtual Card Services was established in 1996 to offer a solution to the mail order market that found conventional methods of securing large volumes of credit card payments cumbersome and costly.

The business rapidly grew by expanding its scope of services to organisations requiring automated, high volume and secure credit card payment processing. Today, VCS SA serves thousands of merchants across SA, including the University of Johannesburg, Club Med, Cape Town Cycle Tour, Tourvest, GetWine and Thompsons Travel.

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