The payment service provider Heidelpay acquires the Universum Group. The company thus shows how important the purchase of invoices in e-commerce continues to be in Germany.
The Heidelpay Group, fintech and payment service provider from Germany, takes over the Frankfurt Universum Group, a company that has been known in the mail order environment for more than 30 years. The Universum Group, as a specialist for the White Labe invoice, is to enable additional payment options for Heidelpay customers. The approval by the Federal Cartel Office took place this week – about the purchase price silence was agreed.
The takeover of the pay-later and debt collection company from Frankfurt is another measure by which Heidelpay adapts to the trend of offering everything in the payment system from a single source. Just recently, the company has acquired companies for special functions with the Austrian payment service provider mpay24 and the POS provider Startec. Especially the purchase of invoices, which is still by far the most popular method of payment in Germany, but also the purchase of installments should contribute to Heidelpay achieving its ambitious goal of doubling sales in the current year. Heidelpay’s transaction volume thus tripled between 2017 and 2018 to almost six billion euros, increasing the number of transactions by 150 percent.
Heidelpay: Corporate Strategy to Lead Payment Service Providers in Europe
Founder and CEO Jan Mirko Hüllemann confidently answers: “Two years ago, a private equity investor, AnaCap, joined Heidelpay. The five acquisitions since then are part of our corporate strategy and serve to expand our portfolio and performance,” he explains in an interview. They want to position themselves as one of the top players among the payment service providers in Europe, who can do everything from omnichannel via their own payment methods, such as the invoice and installment purchase through to the entire debt collection process.
This is a challenge especially for companies like Klarna, Concardis or Stripe, which in turn have made a major contribution in recent months to redistributing forces in the payment area. Heidelpay now serves more than 16,000 customers worldwide and has developed into an all-round service since its founding in 2003. The modular and scalable system supports more than 200 payment methods worldwide and is also available at the point of sale and mobile. All payment steps – acquiring, processing and collecting – can be integrated directly into over 50 common shop systems. With around 200 employees, the company achieved 2018 sales of around 50 million euros.