In a departure from its more-typical strategy of partnering with fintech firms, JPMorgan Chase will acquire digital payments provider WePay. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Though the New York financial industry giant plans to integrate the startup’s payment processing capabilities into its offerings to small business customers, it says that WePay, which was founded in 2008 and has around 200 employees, will continue to operate as a standalone company.
JPMorgan has around four million small business customers and sees the Silicon Valley-based WePay, which has proven proficient in helping sites including GoFundMe and FreshBooks process payments, as a means to better serve those clients.
“This is the first acquisition we’ve brought of this kind,” Matt Kane, chief executive officer of the bank’s merchant services division, told Bloomberg in an interview. “Small business across JPMorgan is an enormous strategic focus for us. We know it’s the lifeblood of the economy as well as one of the biggest growth sectors that we have.”
Over the next year, Kane said, in a separate interview with PYMNTS.com, that JPMorgan Chase will continue to invest in the company and double its headcount.
In the process, the division head will aim to allow WePay to maintain the agile identity that has allowed it to be successful thus far while at the same time investing resources in the acquisition to ensure it can both bring the expected attributes to JPMorgan and continue to expand its scope in time.
Photo: JPMorgan Chase building in London (Credit: Håkan Dahlström / Flickr)
