Advent International forms Circle, a leading payments and technology platform for small merchants and sole traders

London, 16^th November, 2023 – Advent International (“Advent”), one of the largest and most experienced global private equity investors, has formed AI Circle Bidco Limited (“Circle”), a payments and technology platform serving small merchants and sole traders in Europe. As part of this strategy, Circle has agreed to acquire myPOS, a leading provider of payments solutions.

Laurent Le Moal, a seasoned payments and fintech leader, and former Chief Executive Officer of PayU and Vice-President at PayPal, has joined as Chairman of Circle. Under Laurent’s leadership, Circle’s ambition is to become a leading end-to-end payments and technology company serving small merchants and sole traders across Europe, who are traditionally underserved by banks.

Headquartered in the UK, with over 500 employees, myPOS provides a suite of payments, accounts and cards solutions for small merchants and sole traders. Through its product offerings, it sits at the centre of small and micro merchants’ financial flows and is a key partner in allowing them to grow and develop their businesses. The business serves around 170,000 merchants in continental Europe across multiple sectors – including food & beverages, professional services, retail and transportation.

The Circle platform will support the current myPOS management team in growing the customer base while preserving the differentiated business model and the competitive value proposition.

Laurent Le Moal, Chairman at Circle, said: “We have big ambitions to scale the Circle payments and technology platform, and to expand its range of differentiated digital offerings to traditionally underserved sole traders and small merchants. The opportunities to scale the platform’s digital capabilities, to expand internationally, to grow into new services such as software and lending and in turn to support economic growth, are real and exciting, and I cannot wait to start on this journey together with the Advent team.”

Fabio Cali, Director at Advent International, comments: “We are very excited to invest in Circle and to create a truly differentiated digital platform with the ambition to be both market leading and able to support the real economy by helping smaller businesses to flourish. Acquiring myPOS is the first step on this journey and is a business we have followed for over five years, closely tracking its evolution and development. We intend to draw on our strong and in-depth payment processing and broader financial services experience, and with the support of Laurent and our wide network of tenured operating partners, are confident we can build a successful and highly essential platform in Europe.”

AI Circle will be able to leverage Advent’s experience and knowledge in the payments industry. Worldwide since 2008, Advent has invested more than $6.6 billion in 17 payments and fintech companies. Recent investments in the sector include Mangopay (a leading payments solution provider for marketplaces and platforms), Medius (a leading provider of cloud-based accounts payable automation), Thredd (the leading global payment technology platform) and Planet (a global provider of integrated digital payment services).

The transaction, which is subject to customary regulatory approvals, is expected to close in Q4 2023.