Royal Bank of Scotland is to acquire privately-held US merchant payments processor Lynk Systems for $525 million in an all-cash transaction.
Lynk is a merchant acquirer processor for small and medium sized retail businesses. The Atlanta-based company processes transactions initiated by credit and debit cards, cheques, and other access cards from merchant point-of-sale terminals, ATMs and Websites and also provides related services such as the issuance of stored value cards.
Unveiling the acquistion at RBS' first half results presentation, chief executive officer Fred Goodwin said the bank was focusing on its US merchant acquisition business. Back in May RBS bought US Charter One Financial for $10.5bn.
Founded in 1991, Lynk employs 500 employees in its Atlanta headquarters and an additional 350 sales staff nationwide. The company processed 282 million transactions from 2001 to 2003.
The firm says the strength of the RBS balance sheet and corporate banking customer base in the US will present the opportunity to take on larger customers and compete nationally with rivals such as First Data and Global Payments.
For the sale, Lynk Systems was represented by San Francisco-based investment banking boutique FT Partners.