Our Companies
View opportunities at Great Hill Partners' portfolio companies here.
APT
Accelerated Payment Technologies was a provider of integrated payment processing solutions to small and medium-sized merchants.
As experienced investors in the payments space, we had studied the merchant acquiring sector for many years, but had passed on previous opportunities due to limited competitive differentiation.
Enter Accelerated Payment Technologies. In early 2007, Great Hill Partners identified a unique and technically differentiated business process for providing merchant payment services, and contacted APT, a leader in the space. After a year-long dialogue, the APT public company board agreed to accept our terms for a $180 million going-private transaction in May 2008. APT had been founded as a point-of-sale software business and had made the conversion to a payments business over the previous decade. However, the management team lacked payments expertise, a shortcoming recognized by the company's founder. Given our deep knowledge of the payments sector, GHP was able to quickly assemble a talented team of payments experts, led by Roy Banks, the former leader of Authorize.Net. We had known Roy for a number of years and were excited to infuse his knowledge of payment technology and channel sales into APT.
August 2008
Acquired by Global Payments
Financial Technology
As experienced investors in the payments space, we had studied the merchant acquiring sector for many years, but had passed on previous opportunities due to limited competitive differentiation.
Enter Accelerated Payment Technologies. In early 2007, Great Hill Partners identified a unique and technically differentiated business process for providing merchant payment services, and contacted APT, a leader in the space. After a year-long dialogue, the APT public company board agreed to accept our terms for a $180 million going-private transaction in May 2008. APT had been founded as a point-of-sale software business and had made the conversion to a payments business over the previous decade. However, the management team lacked payments expertise, a shortcoming recognized by the company's founder. Given our deep knowledge of the payments sector, GHP was able to quickly assemble a talented team of payments experts, led by Roy Banks, the former leader of Authorize.Net. We had known Roy for a number of years and were excited to infuse his knowledge of payment technology and channel sales into APT.
Roy Banks
Former CEOThe limited amount of debt allowed APT to double its technology and sales teams over a two year period to maintain a growth rate greater than 30%.
GHP completed the acquisition of APT with limited debt (less than 20% of purchase price), positioning the company to be financially flexible. This conservative capital structure allowed APT management to expand aggressively and take advantage of several growth opportunities in the marketplace -- without concerns related to excessive debt payments and financial covenants.
APT was sold to Global Payments, Inc. in October 2012 for $413 million.
- Go-Private
- Sourced Executive Talent
- Low Leverage