Newtek acquires Premier Payments for $16.5m

cash exchanging hands

Newtek, an internally managed business development company has paid nearly $17m for Premier Payments LLC, an electronic payment processor. Newtek hope the acquisition will expand their presence within the merchant processing space.

Premier Payments are one of the largest transaction processing firms in the United States, processing billions of dollars of credit and debit card payments on an annual basis.

The total purchase price was approximately $16.5m, of which $14m was paid in cash and the remainder was paid in newly issued restricted shares of Newtek common stock.

Barry Sloane, chairman, president and CEO of Newtek expressed his delight towards the acquisition:

‘‘Premier Payments has established itself as a first class sales engine with focus on ecommerce, mobile tablet-based and non-tablet-based point-of-sale terminals.  We believe mobile payments and tablet-based point-of-sale terminals will be the significant growth engines for years to come.’’

Commenting on the potential growth Newtek will receive from the acquisition, Sloane stated ‘‘we anticipate gaining approximately 2,500 new merchant accounts, and estimate Newtek’s payment processing portfolio companies will process approximately $5.5 billion in electronic payments and reach approximately 16,000 electronic payment processing clients by the end of 2015.’’

As part of the acquisition, Jeffrey Rubin, founder of Premier Payments and one of the original co-founders of Newtek has joined the firm as a special advisor to Sloane.

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