Israel’s Papaya Global Acquires UK Co Azimo for $200 Million

Papaya Global

Israeli startup Papaya Global, a fintech unicorn that offers a cloud based platform for companies to handle their payrolls, is acquiring Azimo, a British company that offers a digital cross border payments platform for as much as $200 million. The exact price was not revealed, but Calcalist reported that it could be worth that much in both cash and stock.

Papaya Global can certainly afford the acquisition of Azimo. Last September it hit unicorn status with a valuation of almost $4 billion. Papaya became a unicorn after bringing in $250 million in a Series D round of investment and it has raised a total of $440 million in financing to date.

Based in London Azimo was founded in 2012. The company offers a digital money transfer service, and declares its mission is to be the “better way to share money around the world, improving millions of people’s lives.” Azimo boasts that its apps and website are the “fastest, easiest and best-value way to send money to over 200 countries and territories worldwide.”

Founded in 2016 by CEO Eynat Guez, CTO Ofer Herman and CPO Ruben Drong, Papaya Global says that it is reinventing global payroll, payments, and workforce management. The company declares that its automated platform helps companies hire, onboard, manage, and pay people in more than 140 countries. The cloud-based solution is “easy to use and scale, ensures full compliance and provides industry-leading BI and analytics.”

Papaya Global boasts a 300% revenue growth year-over-year for each of the last 3 years. The company says that its reaching unicorn level reflects strong demand for Papaya’s offering in global workforce management. Papaya provides what it calls a radically simple solution for managing and paying all types of global workers in full compliance.

Papaya Global said that with Azimo the company will be able offer a payments solution that delivers payments in hours instead of days. “We will build an innovative new payments and finance offering for clients in cash advance and credit-related products, and in cryptocurrency.”

Eynat Guez said of Azimo, “I’m really passionate about this company, their business, their approach, the amazing global network they built from the ground up, the people who made it happen – they do things the right way and I feel fortunate to bring them into the Papaya family.”

“Azimo’s global digital payment network, multiple payment licenses, and deep fintech expertise,” she added, “will also enable us to build new payroll-related services for our business customers and their employees.”

“We can’t wait to join forces with Papaya to make it even easier for workers to get paid anywhere in the world,” said Richard Ambrose, Azimo’s CEO. “Papaya’s customers will benefit hugely from our long experience in building payment technology and operating as a regulated payments business.