Dive Brief:

• Great Hill Partners has raised a new investment fund with $7 billion over the past five months, exceeding its initial $5 billion goal, the firm said Wednesday in a press release.
• With this ninth fund, the private equity firm will continue its middle-market buyout strategy for investing in fast-growing companies in financial services, software, consumer and business services, among other sectors, the release said.
• The latest round brings the total amount Great Hill has raised to about $19 billion, per the press release, with the Boston-based firm’s prior fund raising $4.65 billion in January 2022.

Dive Insight:

Great Hill Partners, formed in 1998, has had a knack for investment in payments companies over the years. For instance, it currently holds ownership stakes in processing and embedded payments company NMI and business-to-business payments company VersaPay.

Last month, Payroc WorldAccess bought the payments orchestration firm BlueSnap, which raised $50 million from Great Hill Partners and other investors in 2014. 

In a sale to a strategic buyer last year, Great Hill also shed Paytronix, a restaurant customer engagement and payments provider, to Access Group for an undisclosed sum. That was the largest deal that Access had completed in over three decades, the company said at the time. 

Previously, major payments players have acquired some of its stakes, including the acquisition of bill payments processing firm Custom House by money transfer behemoth Western Union; the purchase of bill payments business BillMatrix by processor giant Fiserv; and the acquisitions of payments software business Accelerated Payment Technologies and accounts payable firm MineralTree by Global Payments, per the fund’s website. 

“As stewards of this fresh capital, our investment team looks forward to thoughtfully deploying it by partnering with entrepreneurs, founders, and management teams leading some of the most cutting-edge businesses across North America and Europe,” Mary Kate Bertke, managing director and head of investor relations at Great Hill, said in a statement.

As Great Hill Partners gathers billions for its investment fund, investors’ interest in the payments sector appears to have waned. In the first half of this year, investments and deal values in payments firms dipped to $4.6 billion from the year prior, the lowest in more than a decade, according to a KPMG report. The decline comes amid a “big pullback” generally for the sector, though less so in the U.S., the consulting firm’s payments strategy leader, Jonathan Langlois, said in an interview last month.