H.I.G. Capital’s portfolio company Onyx Payments, a payment processor serving hotel and travel agencies, has acquired Norway-based Net Trans Services and Spain-based Worldwide Payment Systems.
Net Trans Services provides hotel commission recovery and reconciliation services for travel agencies and other hotel booking professionals worldwide. Net Trans has contracted with 10,300 travel distributors in more than 100 countries, processing close to 40 million room nights annually from over 200,000 hotels on their behalf. The company is based in Tønsberg, Norway (www.ntrans.com).
Worldwide Payment Systems (WPS) is a data and payment processing company specialized in the travel industry. WPS serves more than 200,000 travel industry entities in 192 countries providing payment, reconciliation and invoicing solutions. The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Seville, Spain (www.wpsnetwork.com).
According to William Nolan, a Managing Director of H.I.G. Capital, the two acquisitions advance Onyx’s service offerings to both the supply and demand sides of the travel industry. “We are pleased to support Onyx in its acquisitions of Net Trans Services and Worldwide Payment Systems,” he said. “The acquisition will expand Onyx’s geographic footprint and enhance our capabilities to serve the travel industry.”
Onyx Payments operates a global payment network and provides its hotel and travel agency customers with services including commission receipt and disbursement; foreign currency exchange; invoicing; and reconciliation and tracking. The company facilitates in excess of $500 million in payments annually, with more than 40,000 hotels contracted, servicing more than 200,000 travel distributors in nearly 200 countries. In addition to its headquarters in Dallas, Onyx Payments has regional hubs in London, Singapore, New York and Scottsdale. The company was founded in 1992 (www.onyxpayments.com).
“By combining our businesses, we will be able to provide our customers with valued services, increased speed of payments and improve the value chain between travel distributors and hotels,” said Mark Dubrow, Chief Executive Officer of Onyx Payments. “The new Onyx has the innovation, size and financial stability to make the commerce services we provide even more attractive to the multi-national companies that rely on us to process close to a billion dollars in commissions annually.”
H.I.G. Capital specializes in providing capital to small and medium-sized companies and invests in management-led buyouts and recapitalizations of manufacturing or service businesses. H.I.G. Capital has more than $17 billion of capital under management. The firm was founded in 1993 and is based in Miami with additional offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York, San Francisco, London, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro (www.higcapital.com).
2014 PEPD • Private Equity’s Leading News Magazine • 10-20-14
