Dive Brief:

• The Dutch digital payments processor Adyen plans to purchase San Francisco-based enterprise billing company Orb for $335 million in cash, the companies said in a press release Thursday. 
• The co-founders of Orb, Alvaro Morales and Kshitij Grover, agreed to reinvest some of their proceeds from the sale of Orb in Adyen shares, the release said.
• “Combining Orb's billing product with Adyen's payments platform closes the loop between what merchants charge and how those charges perform, enabling merchants to automate smarter revenue decisions in real time,” Adyen co-CEO Ingo Uytdehaage said in the release.

Dive Insight:

Orb, which has raised $25 million since it was founded in 2021, tracks data in real-time to handle pricing for contracts in processing billing for major corporate enterprises.

Both Adyen and Orb have been adapting their payments businesses to AI. “This makes billing a strategic entry point into a new generation of high-growth digital businesses, and one where both existing and prospective customers are actively asking Adyen to step in,” the company said in the release.

In the first phase of the combination, Adyen is absorbing Orb as an incubator, allowing “operational continuity” for the new subsidiary, the release said. “Beyond this first phase, the strategic intent is convergence: a single infrastructure experience for merchants across billing and payments,” Adyen added.

The Orb deal is the second acquisition for Adyen in as many months. In April, Adyen agreed to buy the merchant services firm Talon.One, which manages loyalty programs and incentives, for €750 million (about $870 million). Adyen expects both acquisitions to close on July 1.

Analysts who follow Adyen at the New York financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald consider the acquisitions a positive development in terms of the processor opting to buy in areas where it lacks muscle.

“With Orb being the second acquisition in as many months, we see the acquisition as representing a more durable strategic shift by Adyen to bolster capabilities and fill product gaps via M&A (rather than solely organically),” the firm’s analysts said in a Thursday note to clients.