FortisPay acquires Swype to expand North America B2B services

Preparing to expand its B2B e-commerce offerings in North America, Fortis Payment Systems LLC has acquired technology integrator Swype at Work and entered a long-term partnership with Swype affiliate Net at Work.

Just over a year ago, private equity firm Lovell Minnick Partners made what it called "a significant growth investment" in the payments and merchant services technology that Fortis Payment Systems, or FortisPay, provides through its Zeamster platform.

Zeamster integrates payments software and value-added services for businesses, allowing them to interact with customers in both payments and customer relations aspects of the business.

With the acquisition, the Novi, Michigan-based FortisPay plans to enter middle markets with its payments and enterprise resource planning platform to enable developers and business technology integrators to deliver multi-channel payment processing, cloud EMV with point-to-point encryption, recurring commerce capabilities, integrated invoicing and cost optimization. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Swype enables FortisPay to extend the Zeamster functions to a broader range of business technology markets, a move the companies say can improve both payment processes and overall business efficiencies.

The partnership "signals our further commitment to providing businesses, developers, and VARs with flexible payment solutions that are tailored to the way they work,” Jimmy Nafso, FortisPay’s CEO, said in a Thursday press release. “The Swype acquisition is as equally important as the partnership with Net at Work, which has the industry’s most respected team of ERP and e-commerce specialists and will help us extend our value proposition to new markets.”

FortisPay says the Zeamster platform provides connectivity solutions for hundreds of software developers and channel partners, while providing payments and technology solutions for thousands of businesses that process billions of dollars annually.

“This is a particularly exciting development for Net at Work and our customers," Alex Solomon, Net at Work’s co-president, said in the release. "FortisPay is the pre-eminent payment company in the SMB space serving all types of middle-market companies, they understand partner enablement and are a perfect complement to our broad ERP and e-commerce expertise.”