In the last 18 months there has been a wave of consolidation in the payments sector and that trend looks to continue; the market is dominated by some of the top names like Alipay, Square, Stripe and PayPal but then there is a significant batch of smaller companies; those big names only own about 3 percent off the overall payments industry which points to the M&A potential;“Payment systems are one of the best sources of customer data. That’s what makes the multiples make sense,” said Martin Schmalz, an associate professor of finance at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, to the FT. “Scale does matter. Data is only useful if you have enough of it.” Source.
