Rapid M&A analysis: A look at Global Payments’ $500 million acquisition of MineralTree and the hot AP automation/payments market

Payments companies are increasingly viewing accounts payable automation as a means to capture more spend — which allows them to make money off card-based interchange, cross-border payments, payment platforms and more. In fact, one of the more successful AP automation providers in the smaller end of the SMB market, AvidXChange, was described to a member of our team as “a payments vendor with an AP Trojan horse.” But AvidXChange is not alone in targeting the SMBs and middle-market firms for payments and AP — Coupa, Glantus, Medius, Tipalti and many others offer combined (or individual) solutions in each area, among many others.

Moreover, payment companies are getting in on the AP action as well.

Global Payments’ acquisition of MineralTree is the latest salvo in a land grab for AP capability coming from the payments side, following Fleetcor’s acquisition of NvoicePay and Corcentric buying Vendorin, among other payment firms making strategic acquisitions with close linkages to AP and payments enablement.

But what is MineralTree, and why would a primarily merchant and “seller”-oriented payments company want to enter the messier world of AP?

MineralTree is a cloud-based AP and payment automation solution provider that had raised over $100 million to date prior to the acquisition.

This Spend Matters PRO Rapid Analysis provides an introduction to the AP automation market and its solution components (in relation to ERPs), provides insight into MineralTree’s strengths and weaknesses, and provides cursory insight into the rationale of this $500 million acquisition (a transaction with a valuation that sources suggest is in line with other high-growth SaaS deals).

Spend Matters’ AP automation coverage can be found here.

Spend Matters’ SolutionMap AP vendor ratings, benchmarks and customer satisfaction scores can be found here.

AP, finance and procurement organizations can use Spend Matters TechMatch (a SaaS application) to select an optimal AP solution for their needs based on business requirements (mapped to vendor capability and customer satisfaction ratings using the 2021 SolutionMap benchmark).