Global Processing Services Raises Over US$300 Million to Accelerate Technology Development and Global Growth

Global Processing Services (“GPS”), the leading global payment technology platform, today announced it has raised over US$300 million from Advent International (“Advent”) and Viking Global Investors (“Viking”), who will co-control the company. The investment by Advent will be funded through Advent Tech and Sunley House Capital, an affiliate of Advent.

GPS’ API-first payment technology platform enables innovative card programmes for the world’s leading fintechs, digital challenger banks and embedded finance providers. Its platform has helped scale multiple unicorns and powers a vast array of prominent fintechs across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East, including Revolut, Curve, Starling Bank, Zilch, WeLab Bank and Paidy. Through a single unified code base, GPS enables its customers and partners to launch and scale card programmes across 48 countries, supported by integrations with over 95 issuers. To date, it has issued over 190 million physical and virtual cards, and last year processed more than 1.3 billion transactions on its cloud-based platform. 

“GPS provides key payments technology infrastructure, enabling the global fintech revolution. Their agile, resilient and modern cloud platform drives some of the most innovative use cases and allows fintechs to globalise through a single API,” commented Peter James, Director at Advent International.

“Through their customer-centric innovation, GPS has quietly established a leading position in key markets around the world with an attractive, diversified and global customer base. Together with Viking, we look forward to supporting GPS’ leadership team to expand the business’s product offering and accelerate its international reach.”

“We are delighted to partner with Advent and Viking, with their deep experience and track record in payments and fintech, and, who share our bold vision for the next generation of global payments,” said Joanne Dewar, Chief Executive Officer at GPS.

“GPS has been at the heart of the global fintech explosion, simplifying access to the global rails of the new digital payments era. This investment will allow us to turbo charge our geographic footprint and product expansion plans as we drive the payments ecosystem in the key verticals of today and tomorrow, including digital banking, Buy Now Pay Later, B2B virtual cards, financial empowerment, and much more.”

Advent has a strong track record in the growth of businesses across the payment and software industries, including a recent investment in Planet, the global integrated payments leader, and Dock, the Latin American financial technology infrastructure provider where Advent’s affiliate, Sunley House Capital, co-invested alongside Viking. Worldwide since 2008, Advent has invested ~US$5 billion across 12 payments platform companies.

Viking has a long history investing in payments and software, across both the private and public markets. Viking is investing in GPS out of its private equity vehicles, which currently manage over $17 billion. Recent payments investments include Dock, the Latin American financial technology infrastructure provider where it co-invested alongside Advent, and Clip, the Mexican digital payments and commerce platform.

The transaction will be subject to customary closing conditions.