Payments-related M&As are rising & will only accelerate. Here's why💸; FinTechs should be scared by Marqeta's impressive results & insights 👀; FTX+Huobi, or one of the biggest deals in crypto ever 🤯

Good Morning FinTech, 15 August

Good evening Everyone,

And happy Monday! Today’s issue is crazy hot as we’re going to look at payments-related M&As that are rising & will only accelerate (+ reasons why & what we should expect next), why FinTechs should be scared by Marqeta's impressive results & insights (applies to both card-issuing FinTechs & companies that are Marqeta’s key clientele), and FTX + Huobi, or one of the biggest crypto deals in the making (bonus is a reminder why SBF is the new J.P.Morgan). Let’s jump straight into the hot stuff:

Payments-related M&As are on the rise and will only accelerate. Here's why 💸

Spotting the trends 🔍 Two weeks ago I talked about the continuation of a massive payments consolidation when Global Payments bought EVO for a whopping $4 billion. This is how I ended my takeaway then:

As weakening economic signals raise fears of a broader slowdown, there could be another round of megamergers in the payment space that further increases consolidation.

Maybe not a mega level, but payments mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have definitely ramped up as of late. And they will only continue.

More on this 👉 Just in the last two weeks we have seen:

• PayTech company Jack Henry acquiring payment infrastructure provider Payrailz.

• Restaurant PayTech biz ParTech buying omnichannel restaurant ordering provider Menu Technologies.

• Travel and hospitality tech provider Sabre scooping long-time payment partner Conferma Pay.

• And obviously, the biggest of them all - Global Payments’ EVO acquisition, an all-cash deal that valued EVO at a whopping $4 billion.

• Zooming out, we must note that there were 66 payments-related M&As in the first half of 2022 already, which is bigger than the 59 deals we saw in the same period last year, per data from The Strawhecker Group (TSG).

• In the whole of 2021, there were 127 deals collectively worth $76.6 billion. While impressive, it pales in comparison to 2019’s record $169.4B in M&As when the year saw a series of megadeals (i.e FIS’ Worldpay acquisition & Fiserv’s First Data purchase).

What does this mean? 🤔 We will definitely see M&As accelerating throughout the rest of 2022. Here’s why (+ what’s next):