Vantiv To Acquire Mercury Payment For $1.65 Bln.

(RTTNews) - Payment processor Vantiv Inc (VNTV), Monday agreed to acquire payment technology firm Mercury Payment Systems LLC for $1.65 billion. The deal comes as Vantiv focuses on expanding its traditional merchant and financial institutions and sees strong prospects in the integrated payment space.

Vantiv expects the deal to add one to two percentage points to its revenue growth per year, modestly accretive to adjusted earnings per share in 2014, with accelerating accretion in the following year.

The deal is expected to close in the current quarter.

"The emergence of integrated payment technology at the point-of-sale delivers a differentiated merchant experience and creates a highly-efficient, cloud-based delivery model for customer acquisition and retention," said Vantiv CEO Charles Drucker.

"By combining Mercury's distribution network and innovative solutions with Vantiv's technology platform and products, we are developing a payments eco-system that allows us to serve these clients in new and exciting way."

Mercury, majority-owned by Silver Lake, provides solutions that are embedded into point-of-sale software applications and brought to market through their dealer and developer partners.

Mercury features an extensive network of more than 3,000 point-of-sale software developers and dealers that serve small and medium-sized businesses across the U.S. and Canada. In 2013, Mercury generated revenues of $237 million.

For Vantiv, the Mercury deal is expected to complement its purchase of Element Payment Systems last year.

Meanwhile, as a result of the deal, Mercury is planning to withdraw its proposed initial public offering. In March, Durango, Colorado-based Mercury filed for a $100 million IPO, but as some parties evinced interest in acquiring it, Silver Lake decided to run a short sales process.

Vantiv closed Monday's regular trade at $29.82, up $0.90 or 3.11%, on a volume of 3.6 million shares on the NYSE.