Poynt CEO to head GoDaddy's new commerce division

Another big tech company is making a play for payments. GoDaddy Inc., the internet domain registrar and web hosting and marketing company that has been positioning itself as a business platform for online entrepreneurs, wants a piece of the payments pie. The Scottsdale, Ariz., firm just agreed to pay $365 million cash for Poynt, a POS technology firm, and Poynt CEO Osama Bedier comes with the deal.

GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani stated the acquisition aims to bridge the online and offline shopping experiences, thereby boosting sales and customer satisfaction for the company’s small business clients.

“Commerce is critical to our customers and we continue to invest in building seamlessly intuitive experiences that enable small businesses to sell everywhere,” Bhutani said. “Poynt accelerates our strategy to provide a complete suite of commerce and payment services to address this critical customer need. We’ve built leading ecommerce capabilities that today allow small businesses to easily sell on their sites, across major marketplaces and the most popular social networks, and now we will help make them successful everywhere.”

Additional acquisitions ahead?

Bedier, who founded Google Wallet and was also a PayPal exeutive, launched Poynt in 2013. One of the first products out of the gate was the Poynt smart terminal—a wireless, dual touchscreen terminal that supports card acceptance just about anywhere. The company has received financial backing from a host of investors, including leading acquirer Elavon and Google Ventures.

Poynt’s product suite now includes a range of android-based smart terminals, PoyntOS for third-party terminals, mobile apps, and software for POS invoicing and virtual terminals. Poynt reported that its devices and software integrate with 16 payment processors; the company also offers Poynt Payments in partnership with Elavon.

Poynt software and physical devices are used by more than 100,000 merchants with more than $16 billion in annual gross merchandise volume, according to the company. “Poynt has spent the past seven years building the most advanced connected commerce platform on the market,” Bedier said in a statement.

GoDaddy will pay $320 million cash for Poynt when the deal closes during the first quarter of next year, plus deferred payments potentially totaling $45 million over three years. Bedier is slated to join the GoDaddy leadership team as head of a new commerce division once the deal closes.

Bhutini has said GoDaddy is poised to make additional acquisitions. In a recent presentation to investors, he said the tech giant has $3.5 billion in capital available to deploy between now and 2022 “with no incremental debt” and that the company will “execute acquisitions to accelerate growth in talent and technology and fill out our product roadmap.”

Whether you want to upgrade your POS offerings, find a payment gateway partner, bone up on fintech regs or PCI requirements, find an upcoming trade show, read about faster payments, or discover the latest innovations in merchant acquiring, The Green Sheet is the resource for you. Since 1983, we've helped empower and connect payments professionals, starting with the merchant level salespeople who bring tailored payment acceptance and digital commerce tools, along with a host of other business services to merchants across the globe. The Green Sheet Inc. is also a proud affiliate of Bankcard Life, a premier community that provides industry-leading training and resources for payment professionals.

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