Papaya Global to acquire Azimo and expand its payroll payments

US-based payments company Papaya Global has planned to acquire money transfer startup Azimo to launch its own remittance efforts.

Terms of the acquisition are not officially being disclosed, but a company affiliate said that the deal was between USD 150 million and USD 200 million. Papaya is acquiring the full business upon the deal closing, including all of Azimo’s employees.

The deal will help Papaya Global on two levels. Firstly, it will help it expand its geographic footprint: Azimo currently has payment licenses in the UK, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong, and it operates a payment network in more than 160 countries, while Papaya Global operated services in 150 countries.

Secondly, it will help Papaya Global expand the services it provides. These include not just instant payment of payroll, but potentially a much wider selection of remittance services for people who are working in one country but have family or others they want to pay in another. Now, the company can keep them on its own network (and thus capture the commissions and foreign exchange fees) around those transactions.

It also plays into a strategy Papaya Global has been pursuing for some time to provide an all-in-one, end-to-end service for its customers, which include not just employers sourcing and eventually hiring people in other markets (be they freelancers or full-time or something in between), but increasingly services for those employees themselves, according to company officials.