Emerging-markets private equity firm Actis has agreed to acquire electronic payments specialist Paycorp Holdings, part of South African financial services group Transaction Capital, in a blockbuster deal worth R937m.

Paycorp has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Transaction Capital since 2006. Actis will become Paycorp’s majority shareholder, while founder and CEO Steven Kark and his executive team will become co-investors.

“Our core executive team has been integral to this transaction and remains unchanged,” Kark says.

The transaction includes the entire issued share capital of Paycorp and subsidiaries ATM Solutions, DrawCard and EFTPOS.

ATM Solutions, which owns and operates about 5 000 ATMs in South Africa and Namibia, was founded by Kark and Rowan Schwartz in 1999. DrawCard, meanwhile, operates prepaid gift card programmes and EFTPOS provides payment systems that allow merchants to accept debit and credit cards.

Kark says the Actis investment will allow it to form alliances with other payment players worldwide and extend its footprint into new markets.

Actis has US$5,2bn funds under management, $1,5bn of which is invested in African businesses. Its investment in Paycorp is its fifth in the payments industry in the past three years. Its financial services portfolio includes Indian companies AGS, IDFC and the National Stock Exchange of India; Brazil’s XP Investimentos; and African companies Alexander Forbes, Diamond Bank and Emerging Markets Payments Holdings.

Actis also has investments in the healthcare and energy sectors, in industrials and in real estate.