TransFirst’s Break from the M&A Game Will Be Brief

Dallas-based processor TransFirst, which has completed two major acquisitions in the past month that have more than doubled the company's size, is taking a break from the M&A game, but not one that will last long. “It'll be two to three months before another acquisition,” Mark Travis, chief financial officer for the privately held company, told Digital Transactions today at the Electronic Transactions Association's annual meeting and expo in Las Vegas. With backing from GTCR Golder Rauner, a Chicago-based private-equity firm, TransFirst embarked on an ambitious acquisition strategy two years ago that has catapulted the company to $18.5 billion in annualized transaction volume. In March, it completed acquisitions of Payment Resources International, a Newport Beach, Calif.-based independent sales organization, and of the third-party processing business of Fifth Third Bank Processing Solutions. The latter deal brought the company's roster of agent banks supported to 760, or some 25% of the agent bank market. Travis says the company could stand pat for some time if it chose to. “There's a lot of organic growth opportunities with the business we have today,” he says. PRI, for example, brings to TransFirst strengths in Internet and automated clearing house payments. But the processor is not likely to deviate from the strategy of growth by acquisition in specialized, high-potential niches it adopted in 2002. Travis says the company is particularly interested in opportunities in bill-payment processing.