SumUp, Payleven Merge to Better Tackle Mobile Payments Market

It was literally only a matter of time before this kind of thing started happening more often, and now it’s starting to show up.

New reports suggest a merger between SumUp and Payleven, two mobile payment providers now one entity in the face of growing competition.

SumUp and Payleven first emerged after Square showed up, and offered a set of similar smartphone-based accessories allowing users to make both debit and credit card transactions.

The combined entity now boasts over a million customers throughout 15 different countries, and reports right now are keeping mum about many of the specifics involved in the deal.

There’s no word about the pricing involved, and there’s no word about either side changing its name, though it might be that SumUp is getting the better end of the deal as its CEO and co-founder Daniel Klein will serve as the new company’s CEO.

The current investor load is sticking around, and given that the two companies have raised a combined $70 million based on some reports—which may or may not be spot-on—it’s a safe bet the duo will have plenty of room to work with.

With a host of companies going after a market that proved not to be as large as many had expected, it was a safe bet that some companies were going to close down outright.

There just wasn’t enough market to support that many, and with so many companies on hand, it would become a battle of attrition as companies struggled to offer a bigger, better deal sufficient to draw customers.

Consolidation was also an option, allowing companies to pool customer bases and market capitalization to better become sustainable, and hold out against the onslaught of closures.

SumUp and Payleven seem to have done just that, and it’s a move that will leave the new company much more likely to survive.

This may be the start of a larger wave of consolidations in the mobile payments space; with so many firms out to get a hand on payment processing, there’s less room in the field than there once was.

Consolidated forces may better take on the market, and SumUp and Payleven have taken steps to be part of that new market.