Naspers-owned Dutch fund Prosus and Israeli fintech Rapyd have published announcements stating that PayU payment companies operating in Africa and Latin America have been the subject of a deal that has just been finalised. No value was given for the acquisition. However, this means that Prosus' European payment assets, including Poland's PayU, have not changed hands. This may also be confirmed by information provided to cashless.pl by the press office of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF), which indicates that the KNF did not consider the application for approval of the PayU acquisition as part of the operation just finalized.

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Under the current regulations of the Payment Services Act, an entity that intends to take control (directly or indirectly) of a national payment institution (and PayU has such a status) is obliged to submit an appropriate notification to the KNF, so that the supervisor can assess whether this may hurt the activities of the acquired entity, including above all on the security of money and the interests of users. ‘The consequence of taking over a domestic payment institution without the notification procedure or in the event of the KNF's objection to such an acquisition is a prohibition on exercising the voting rights from the acquired stake or shares in the domestic payment institution,' explains Jacek Barszczewski, spokesman for the KNF.

We asked both parties to the transaction, Rapyd and Prosus, to confirm the change in the scope of the acquisition, the reasons for the change, and the possible impact on the purchase price. By the time the text was published, we had received no comment. The press office of PayU in Poland, on the other hand, informed us that the only response to our questions could be a reference to the press release published by Prosus, which we mentioned in the introduction. However, we can infer that the reason for the change in the transaction scope and the exclusion of PayU's European GPO assets may have been a problem with Rapyd in raising the full amount promised in August 2023. This may be confirmed by the fact that the value at which the acquisition of the African and American companies was completed is not mentioned in the announcements following the acquisition's completion.

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A few days ago, we wrote in cashless.pl regarding the finalization of the acquisition of PayU GPO by Israeli fintech Rapyd. In doing so, we referred to Israeli media reports, as official announcements from the parties to the transaction were not yet available at the time of writing. Foreign news outlets suggested that the deal announced in August 2023 had been finalized in this way. At the time, it was reported that PayU GPO's owner, a Dutch-registered company owned by the South African conglomerate Naspers and the Prosus fund, would sell PayU's American, African, and European payment companies to Rapyd for $610 million after receiving the relevant approvals.