UAE's Network International To Acquire African Payments' Firm DPO

Dubai headquartered-Network International has announced it will acquire African-based technology-enabled payments enabler DPO Group for $288 million. 

The acquisition will strengthen Network’s presence in Africa, giving the payments firm direct access to an extensive and diverse range of direct merchant relationships. 

DPO is the largest online commerce platform operating at scale across the African continent with a presence in 19 countries. In June 2020 alone, DPO signed 4,400 merchants, an all-time high for the Kenyan firm.

The digital and online payments market in Africa is likely to grow at 19% CAGR over the next five years with Covid-19 expected to accelerate this growth, according the experts.

Simon Haslam, chief executive officer, commented: “Africa is a vast and diverse continent, representing the world's most under-penetrated, nascent and fast growing payments markets, where we have seen recent signs of an acceleration in those trends. DPO will further consolidate our presence in Africa, strengthen our position across the entire payments value chain and accelerate our growth.”

Network processed $43.8 billion in total processed volumes (TPV) for more than 70,000 merchants in 2019, and processed 752 million issuer transactions on 14.2 million cards for over 200 financial institutions.

The DPO transaction will be almost entirely funded through the proceeds from an equity placing representing 10% of the Company’s existing issued share capital; $50 million vendor consideration shares issued to Apis Growth Fund I, managed by Apis Partners (“Apis”) and $13 million consideration shares issued to the DPO co-founders. Any small remaining balance to be funded via existing debt facilities.