Dutch cloud banking platform Mambu has moved to strengthen its position via an acquisition, identifying what it calls a ‘striking’ opportunity in the bank payments market.
The company has purchased Numeral, a French payments technology provider for banks and fintechs. Numeral’s core offering centres around a universal gateway for financial institutions to connect to partner banks, access schemes, and a payments hub for automated processing.
Numeral processes over €10bn annually and is active across Europe from its headquarters in Paris, having recently expanded its UK operations. Mambu is hopeful that the M&A will enable it to capitalise on the high volume, high-value Eurozone payments sector, where the value of bank payments stood at €191trn in 2022.
“This acquisition marks a considered move to deliver a more modern, comprehensive payment offering which is now an integrated part of Mambu’s product portfolio,” said Fernando Zandona, CEO of Mambu.
“Numeral’s advanced payments platform will enable us to address changing customer demands, strengthen existing product lines and expand our market reach, while offering businesses advanced capabilities to meet an extensive range of needs.”
The takeover is the latest in a series of major acquisitions to take place in the payments industry in the second half of 2024.
Notable acquisitions include Visa’s takeover of fraud prevention firm Featurespace, Stripe’s buyout of stablecoin orchestration platform Bridge, and OKTO’s expansion in Switzerland via the acquisition of the local division of Aplauz Financial Services.
Post-acquisition, Mambu aims to ‘drive new value from wider audience segments’ by incorporating Numeral’s capabilities into its platform. Mambu also hopes that its new asset will benefit from its existing partnerships with leading European banks, like ABN AMRO Barclays, BNP Paribas and HSBC.
“Payments are at the heart of how companies do business around the world, yet they remain trapped in systems designed decades ago, unfit for the ongoing instant payments revolution,” said Édouard Mandon, Co-Founder and CEO of Numeral.
“This is a problem that Mambu intimately understands having helped banks and financial institutions worldwide to migrate from rigid, traditional core systems to agile and adaptable cloud infrastructure.”
