First Data forays into open source payments via Spree Commerce acquisition

First Data will continue to operate the service and, in addition, Spree has already started to develop First Data products based on Spree, according to Spree’s CEO Sean Schofield cited by the same source. In addition, as of March 2016, Wombat, the company’s integration platform for ecommerce backend systems, will be ceasing operations.

Prior to this, Spree had raised USD 6.5 million from investors that include AOL (parent of TechCrunch), Thrive, True Ventures, Vegas Tech Fund and others.

First Data is backed by KKR and in July 2015, it filed for an IPO. The company posted USD 11.2 billion in revenue in 2014 but is also unprofitable, with a net loss of USD 26 million in the most recent quarter that ended in June 2015. In 2014 the company processed 74 billion transactions, USD 1.7 trillion in payment volume and 28% of all ecommerce globally.

This is First Data’s fifth acquisition. Others have included mobile gift card app Gyft; customer loyalty platform Perka; open source, Android-based point-of-sale provider Clover; and payment security startup Achex.