Acquisitive German fintech heidelpay adds digital pay hardware

German payments company heidelpay has made a series of recent deals to diversify its merchant appeal, including this week's agreement to buy digital point of sale terminal seller Alpha-Cash Payment GmbH.

Alpha-Cash Payment GmbH distributes terminals from Verifone and Ingenico in northern and eastern Germany with offices in Rostock and Leipzig. The company provides sales and support services for merchants needing to process cashless transactions. Its acceptance partners include the German interbank network, Girocard, as well as Visa (including VPay), Mastercard (including Maestro), American Express, JCB, and Diners Club International. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The heidelpay Group, founded in 2003, was acquired by the private equity firm AnaCap Financial Partners in 2017. Since that acquisition, heidelpay has made series of purchases, including Vienna, Austria-based online payment services provider, mPay24, and Hamburg, Germany-based payments firm StartTec.

In January, heidelpay acquired Frankfurt, Germany-based installment lender Universum Group to gain a new payment capability called FlexiPay. After the acquisition, heidelpay reported that the addition of FlexiPay would allow it to continue to build out its omnichannel payments strategy for the DACH region (the German-speaking countries of Germany, Austria and Switzerland).

“Bricks-and-mortar retailing and e-commerce are increasingly converging. Payment service platforms now need to provide a seamless, omnichannel payments experience across e-commerce and PoS thus enabling retailers to offer their customers a truly satisfying shopping experience. The purchase of Alpha-Cash strengthens our position in this extremely fragmented area of PoS and expands our presence in the east and north-east of Germany respectively,” stated Mirko Hüllemann, founder and CEO of the heidelpay Group, in a press release.