The ZOOZ acquisition is for an undisclosed amount but brings PayU’s total sum of investments and acquisitions in global fintech to more than $350 million since it began a series of strategic moves across the globe in 2016 to open access to financial services.

The ZOOZ and PayU teams will work together to create the leading, global standard payments infrastructure of the future. As part of this vision they will build a comprehensive, modular, and highly flexible ‘Payment OS platform’ that can support evolving merchant and broader payment industry needs. The platform’s immediately expected features include fraud management and real time reporting or smart routing, to better aid global merchant growth.

The deal follows a successful partnership which, for the first time, gave PayU merchants such as  Gett and Kiwi.com access to 2.3 billion new customers across high growth markets via the ZOOZ-designed PayU Hub platform. It leverages PayU’s payments infrastructure and ZOOZ’s state-of-the-art technology to open up access to new markets for merchants with global aspirations and sets a new standard for payments across borders.

As part of the deal, due to close summer 2018, ZOOZ’s co-founder and CEO Oren Levy and CTO Ronen Morecki will become part of PayU’s Global Leadership team, focusing on tech and business development. ZOOZ’s 70-strong team of experienced technical and payments experts will also become part of the PayU team, boosting the business’ technical capabilities.

Laurent le Moal, CEO of PayU, said: “PayU is one of the most active investors in the fintech space and we are always looking for opportunities to innovate and support our merchant clients to grow. Today’s announcement is a great illustration of this philosophy in action and we are pleased to be welcoming the ZOOZ team further into the PayU fold. By working together to create the first ‘Payment OS’ platform we will advance PayU’s mission to help build a world without financial borders”.

Oren Levy, co-founder and CEO of ZOOZ added: “After a year-long, productive partnership, our shared vision to create a new global standard in payments infrastructure is becoming a reality with PayU’s acquisition of ZOOZ. The unique contribution we bring to PayU is an advanced technological layer which not only helps merchants worldwide to upscale their operations and provide a better customer experience, but also offers analytics and optimization capabilities that equip them with unprecedented insights”.

With the cross-border market expected to reach $994 billion in 2020, nearly two-thirds of cross-border business will come from high growth markets like Asia and Latin America, according to a report by Accenture*. Alternative payment methods still represent as much as two-thirds of all payments in these markets.

ZOOZ was founded in 2010 by Oren Levy and Ronen Morecki. It has become one of the most well-known payments technology players in Israel.

PayU is part of Naspers, a global Internet and entertainment group and one of the largest technology investors in the world. Following completion of the deal, ZOOZ will be wholly owned by Naspers, strengthening its Payments division and supporting its strategy to grow its financial services footprint across emerging markets with long-term growth potential.