Contactless payments company PayRange has agreed to acquire KioSoft Technologies, a rival it battled for four years in federal court until reaching a legal truce last year.

Portland, Oregon-based PayRange and Kiosoft disclosed the acquisition in a Monday press release, without providing financial details. They expect the transaction to close this month, a spokesperson for PayRange said.

Both companies provide payments services in the unattended retail space, equipping vending machine operators and other merchants with tools to accept payments when they may not be present at a sales location. Such services are used at laundromats, car washes, parking lots or vending machine locations.

In January 2024, PayRange and KioSoft agreed to settle their four-year-old intellectual property dispute in the U.S. District Court for Southern Florida. PayRange had alleged that KioSoft and an affiliate, TechTrex, infringed on its mobile payment technology patents. 

Now, KioSoft’s 285 employees will join PayRange as part of the merger, the PayRange spokesperson said. KioSoft President Charles Lee will become vice chairman of the combined business and “retain a significant ownership stake,” according to the release.

PayRange, which is led by Founder and CEO Paresh Patel, has 60 employees. 

“By bringing together PayRange’s mobile-first platform and consumer engagement technology with KioSoft’s card present and connectivity solutions, we’re expanding the breadth and depth of what we can deliver to the market,” Patel said in a LinkedIn post. 

KioSoft is based in Boynton Beach, Florida, according to that company’s website. The business will operate under the PayRange brand, the release said.

PayRange says its services include mobile-first technology that enables transactions with identity verification. The new combined operations “will serve millions of connected machines in markets across the world, including the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe,” the release said. 

Previously, PayRange operated mainly in the U.S. and Canada, according to a release last year regarding the legal settlement.

In February, PayRange bought another company, Turns, which sold management software for laundromats, giving those business owners automated tools. In a press release on that deal, the companies suggested they would service some 5,000 U.S. laundromats by early 2027.

PayRange is getting bigger just as the industry begins to consolidate. In June, the self-checkout kiosk company Cantaloupe agreed to be acquired by the private equity-backed self-service technology company 365 Retail Markets for $848 million.

Cantaloupe previously estimated the total addressable unattended retail market at $18.3 billion, with the expectation that it would grow at a 10% annual compound clip, according to a September analyst report this year on that company from the investment firm William Blair. 

Aside from PayRange, Nayax and Crane Payment Innovations are competitors in the market, William Blair said in its Sept. 19 note to its investment clients.

“We believe unattended retail represents a large, fragmented, attractive growth market that is benefitting from improving technology, changing consumer preferences, and new formats such as micro markets and smart stores,” William Blair’s report said.  

While the spokesperson for PayRange declined to comment on the financial details of the Kiosoft transaction, there were big dollars associated with the two companies’ legal settlement last year.

Under terms of the settlement, KioSoft agreed to license PayRange’s payments technology at a cost of potentially more than $62 million over a decade, according to the press release they issued regarding the agreement. 

In the release, PayRange touted its “extensive patent portfolio” in the release. "We're thrilled that we have finally resolved the patent dispute with KioSoft and that our technological innovations have been vindicated," Patel said in the release last year, noting the "importance of intellectual property in fostering game-changing industry innovation.”