ACI Worldwide to acquire Western Union’s Speedpay

ACI Worldwide and The Western Union Company have announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for ACI to acquire Speedpay, Western Union’s US bill pay business, for US$750m in an all-cash transaction. This acquisition brings together two bill pay portfolios in the rapidly evolving US electronic bill pay and presentment (EBPP) market.

Together, the ACI and Speedpay bill pay solutions will serve more than 4,000 customers across the US, bringing expanded reach in existing and complementary segments such as finance, insurance, healthcare, higher education, utilities, government and mortgage. This could enable the combined business to more effectively serve a rapidly evolving category as well as pursue additional vertical segments.

The acquisition of Speedpay will increase the scale of ACI’s On Demand platform business and will accelerate platform innovation through increased R&D spend and investments in ACI On Demand’s platform infrastructure. ACI will bring together the Speedpay and UP Bill Payment platforms into a unified bill payment platform that will support billions of transactions. The combined ACI and Speedpay team of bill payments experts will bring together decades of vertical experience and payments thought leadership, developing and delivering end-to-end solutions that more efficiently address specific business needs and add more value to customers and partners.

Centerview Partners LLC is acting as financial advisor to Western Union and BofA Merrill Lynch is acting as financial advisor to ACI. Sidley Austin LLP is Western Union’s counsel and Jones Day is advising ACI.