PayU Acquires Israeli Payment Technology Provider, ZOOZ, with a shared vision to create new global standard in payments infrastructure
PayU announces the acquisition of leading payments technology platform ZOOZ. The deal supports PayU’s ongoing expansion into high growth markets and targets the 94 billion* opportunity in cross border payments.
The ZOOZ acquisition is for an undisclosed amount but brings PayU’s total sum of investments and acquisitions in global fintech to more than 50 million since it began a series of strategic moves across the globe in 2016 to open access to financial services.
The ZOOZ and PayU teams will work together to create the leading, global standard payments infrastructure of the future. As part of this vision, they will build a comprehensive, modular, and highly flexible ‘Payment OS platform’ that can support evolving merchant and broader payment industry needs. The platform’s immediately expected features include fraud management and real time reporting or smart routing, to better aid global merchant growth.
The deal follows a successful partnership, which, for the first time, gave PayU merchants such as Gett and Kiwi.com access to 2.3 billion new customers across high growth markets via the ZOOZ-designed PayU Hubplatform. It leverages PayU’s payments infrastructure and ZOOZ’s state-of-the-art technology to open up access to new markets for merchants with global aspirations and sets a new standard for payments across borders.
As part of the deal, due to close summer 2018, ZOOZ’s co-founder and CEO Oren Levy and CTO Ronen Morecki will become part of PayU’s Global Leadership team, focusing on tech and business development. ZOOZ’s 70-strong team of experienced technical and payments experts will also become part of the PayU team, boosting the business’ technical capabilities.
Laurent le Moal, CEO of PayU, said: “PayU is one of the most active investors in the fintech space and we are always looking for opportunities to innovate and support our merchant clients to grow. Today’s announcement is a great illustration of this philosophy in action and we are pleased to be welcoming the ZOOZ team further into the PayU fold. By working together to create the first ‘Payment OS’ platform we will advance PayU’s mission to help build a world without financial borders”.
Oren Levy, co-founder and CEO of ZOOZ added: “After a year-long, productive partnership, our shared vision to create a new global standard in payments infrastructure is becoming a reality with PayU’s acquisition of ZOOZ. The unique contribution we bring to PayU is an advanced technological layer which not only helps merchants worldwide to upscale their operations and provide a better customer experience, but also offers analytics and optimization capabilities that equip them with unprecedented insights”.
With the cross-border market expected to reach 94 billion in 2020, nearly two-thirds of cross-border business will come from high growth markets like Asia and Latin America, according to a report by Accenture*. Alternative payment methods still represent as much as two-thirds of all payments in these markets.
ZOOZ was founded in 2010 by Oren Levy and Ronen Morecki. It has become one of the most well-known payments technology players in Israel.
PayU is part of Naspers, a global Internet and entertainment group and one of the largest technology investors in the world. Following completion of the deal, ZOOZ will be wholly owned by Naspers, strengthening its Payments division and supporting its strategy to grow its financial services footprint across emerging markets with long-term growth potential.
About PayU
PayU uses its payments heritage and expertise to deliver financial services in emerging markets. Our local operations in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa enable us to be experts in these countries and provide the best solutions for the local market. PayU is the leading online payment service provider in 16 high growth markets, dedicated to creating a fast, simple and efficient payment process for merchants and buyers. Our 250+ payment methods and PCI certified platforms are designed to meet every consumer’s needs.
The markets in which PayU operates represent a potential consumer base of nearly 2.3 billion people and a huge growth potential for merchants. PayU has more than 1,800 payment specialists based in these local markets supporting PayU’s 300,000+ merchants and the millions of consumers making online payments.
About ZOOZ
Founded in 2010, ZOOZ envisions a new world of global commerce unlimited by borders, legacy systems and inefficiency. Built with next generation scalable technology, our platform enables merchants and PSPs to connect to numerous payment options around the world, gain insights through advanced analytics and leverage them to control and optimize their payments via a single smart platform.
To date, ZOOZ has raised thirty-five (35) million dollars in four rounds of financing from leading investors including Rhodium, lool Ventures, Blumberg Capital, Target Global and X/Seed Capital with participation of angels such as Eilan Tirosh.
For more information visit: https://www.zooz.com/>
Oren Levy
Oren Levy is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience in payments, commerce and technology. Driven by a realization that online payments haven’t evolved in the past few decades and limit today’s fast growing global companies Oren co-founded ZOOZ in 2010. Today, he acts as the CEO of ZOOZ, the world’s most innovative payments and optimization technology enablingmodern enterprises to reach the estimated trillion-dollar cross border commerce potential. Prior to ZOOZ, Oren was an executive director at Brookline (USA) for eleven years, managing its worldwide sales efforts and strategic partnerships initiatives. Before Brookline Oren held marketing and technology positions at BATM, Fundtech and L.G.E.S.
Ronen Morecki
Ronen Morecki is an entrepreneur and an executive with over 20 years of experience in the enterprise software industry. Ronen identifies himself as an online payments hacker and business technology enthusiast.
He is the technological visionary and backbone of ZOOZ, Ronen co-founded the company in 2010 and acts as the CTO. With vast experience as CTO, business, operations and engineering manager, in both startup and large enterprise software companies, Ronen is specialized in online payments, fraud detection, security and enterprise applications and platforms.
If you’re a business and would like to upload a media release, click here.
