Nexa Equity LLC, a private equity firm focused on scaling lower middle market software and fintech businesses, announced today that it has acquired Choice Inc., a leading global payments platform.
Additionally, Choice has acquired Direct Payment Consultants, a payments provider that partners directly with merchants. After the acquisition, Choice's platform will process more than $3 billion in annual payments volume across 7,000+ customers in the United States and Canada. The founding teams of both Choice and Direct Payment Consultants each continue to hold a meaningful stake in the combined business. Financial terms of the transactions were not disclosed.
The Choice global payments platform provides advanced, end-to-end omnichannel commerce solutions to merchants and technology companies of all sizes. The company's modern payment integrations and business management solutions empower independent software vendors (ISVs), payment facilitators (PayFacs), enterprise merchants and independent sales organizations (ISOs) to enable their merchants to accept multiple electronic payment types and tools to scale their businesses.
Direct Payment Consultants is focused on helping merchants complete end-to-end payment transactions for their businesses. Combined with Choice's leading platform, the customers of Choice and Direct Payment Consultants will benefit from an expanded product portfolio and the shared knowledge of operators with a deep understanding of the payments space.
"Choice's mission to modernize the convergence of payments and technology to transform the future of commerce aligns well with Nexa Equity's investment strategy," said Nexa Founder and Managing Partner Vlad Besprozvany. "We look forward to scaling the Choice platform through organic initiatives while continuing to actively pursue strategic acquisitions like Direct Payment Consultants."
Nexa Equity's investment will augment Choice's go-to-market team and enhance its omnichannel fintech platform. The platform includes a payment gateway, application programming interfaces (API), point-of-sale-software, invoicing, recurring billing, embedded financing, real-time underwriting, and comprehensive partner and merchant reporting.
"We wanted to bring on a capital partner that understands our business, goals and end customer, and we found that in Nexa Equity," said Choice CEO John Paul Golino. "Choice is laser focused on providing customers with the most comprehensive and cutting-edge omnichannel payment solutions in the industry to benefit all parties in the equation. Our acquisition of Direct Payment Consultants will enable us to execute on this vision even further and I'm thrilled to have the Direct Payment Consultants team join us and to take Choice to the next level together."
"We are excited to join forces with Choice and to enhance our service to customers by offering them the proprietary software and tools in Choice's platform," added Direct Payment Consultants CEO Jim Black. "The combination solidifies our ability to deliver a leading integrated payments solution to our customers and partners, and we look forward to what we will achieve as a combined team."
Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and Morris, Manning & Martin served as legal counsel to Nexa Equity in connection with the transactions.
MAPP Advisors, a fintech advisory firm with a core focus on payments, and CorvinoLaw advised Choice in connection with the Nexa acquisition.
733Park, an M&A advisory firm specializing in payments, fintech, crypto, and SaaS, advised Nexa Equity and Choice on the Direct Payment Consultants transaction.