North Lane Technologies and daVinci Payments have completely merged into a unified payments brand called Onbe the company announced March 31.
Onbe’s Chairman and interim CEO Juli Spottiswood told FinLedger that the name Onbe derives from the phrase “on behalf,” since the company is “facilitating payments on behalf of our clients,” she said.
Spottiswood is also the CEO and Chairman of Syncapay, which acquires high growth payments companies that have technology solutions. In fact, Spottiswood led the merger of daVinci Payments and North Lane Technologies, formerly Wirecard North America.
Onbe, which is based in both Chicago and Philadelphia, has a majority equity investment by Centerbridge Partners, although Spottiswood couldn’t specify the financial terms of the transaction.
Onbe offers a variety of payments options across 200 countries and 9 currencies, according to a news release. The company has a virtual payments offering which enables real-time payments and choice and flexibility for recipients. Also, payments can be provisioned to digital wallets for online, in-store, and in-app purchases.
Spottiswood explained that the company’s customer base are businesses that work in a variety of segments, spanning from Fortune 100 companies to small-to-medium sized businesses.
“We facilitate incentive payments, we facilitate alternative income payments and we facilitate refunds,” Spottiswood said. “And those can be made by any corporate entity, but we really play in the corporate funded payment space. Any size company is a potential client for us.”
Although Spottiswood is currently the interim CEO, she did say that the company is externally looking for a permanent CEO to fill the position. Also, no employee was laid off as part of the merger.
Going forward, Spottiswood said she sees a lot of opportunity in North America, specifically with helping corporations with their payments efficiency and cost and helping clients have the opportunity to engage with recipients.
“This isn’t an opportunity where [we’re] just trying to win market share from the competitor, as much as [we’re] trying to convert a lot of volume that’s still being done via cheque or other modalities to the modalities that we offer,” she said.
Although cryptocurrencies have been making the headlines recently, such as Coinbase’s hotly anticipated public market debut, Spottiswood said that cryptocurrencies aren’t in Onbe’s short-term strategy.
“At the same time, you can’t ignore what’s happening in crypto, so we’ll just stay close to it,” she said.
In other payments news, buy now, pay later giant Afterpay and global payments platform Adyen are teaming up to offer Afterpay’s buy now, pay later service to retailers.
Also, Ramp, which provides a corporate card and spend management platform, has raised $115 million in new funding at a $1.6 billion valuation. The new capital injection was led by D1 Capital Partners and Stripe with participation from Goldman Sachs, Founders Fund, Coatue Management, Thrive Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Box Group, Neo, Contrary Capital and angel investors, according to a news release.