FT Partners Advises Judo on its Growth Financing led by Route Sixty-Six Ventures
Overview of Transaction
- On January 21, 2015, Judo Payments (“Judo”) closed a growth financing round with Route 66 Ventures
- Judo is Europe's leading provider of simple, secure card payments built for mobile
- Its award winning payment solutions help power some of the largest businesses in Europe while its marketplace solution simplifies payments for businesses of all sizes
- The Company, headquartered in the U.K., was founded in 2012 and has experienced tremendous growth and shown great early customer traction
- Route 66 Ventures is a leading private equity firm that provides venture capital, private equity, and debt to emerging financial services companies, and also selectively invests in other industries
- The additional investment will allow Judo to further build out its end-to-end payment solution in order to spur more adoption amongst merchants
Significance of Transaction
- Consumers are shifting purchasing to mobile at an unprecedented speed requiring merchants to mobilize their business models
- mCommerce growth (86%) is outpacing all eCommerce (18%) and in-store (4%) (1)
- Mobile requires a different approach as consumers are impatient, connections are slow and IP address-based fraud prevention is ineffective
- Judo enables large merchants to adapt and win while maintaining critical acquirer relationships
FT Partners' Role
- FT Partners served as exclusive strategic and financial advisor to Judo and its Board of Directors
- Transaction demonstrates FT Partners' continued strength in the Payments sector, with a growing focus on mobile applications
(1) Online Retailing Research (Centre for Retail Research, Nottingham UK)