Prepaid Financial Services (PFS), a leading e-money institution that specialises in prepaid card issuing, acquiring and providing alternative banking solutions via its own technology platform, today announced it has sold 5% of the company to a strategic investor after being valued in excess of £50m.
The announcement comes during another record breaking year for the company, which following its 9 month accounts is on target to report growth of 50%, taking turnover to £28m+ and forecast EBITDA of £3.2m.
PFS has continued to expand its payments operations in 2015 by capitalising on its award winning prepaid cards, e-wallets, basic bank accounts and payment gateway offerings across Europe. In response to the increasing demand for PFS’s services, the company has doubled its headcount with a number of strategic hires across its 3 European locations. In April this year, Terry Walter was appointed as CFO bringing with him over 40 years of finance sector experience across 4 continents, the most recent of which being 10 years at C-level within the payments industry. Terry joined a number of other high calibre hires who have brought with them a wealth of e-money and financial technology experience, including Marketing and PR Manager Heather Gray who is a corporate communications and marketing specialist in the payments sector.
Noel Moran, CEO said: “Following another successful year, we are now turning our attention to more aggressive business growth with further significant investment being made into the people and the systems we now have in place. With the payments industry rife with mergers and acquisitions, there has been a fair bit of interest expressed from private equity and trade buyers as well as speculation about us considering options to further accelerate our growth. PFS is continuing to look at options corporately for the next phase and recognises that having external investors would be important ahead of any plans such as a possible IPO. Whilst still at an early stage, given our growth this year and our continued growth next year, we are in a fairly unique position within prepaid and on target to break £37m turnover and £4.8m EBITDA in 2016.”