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Core Innovation Capital and the Center for Financial Services Innovation has announced that their portfolio company has been acquired by PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL). As quoted in the press release: CFSI, the nation’s authority on financial health, made an early investment in TIO Networks in 2005. Core, a venture capital firm investing in leading financial technology companies, …
Core Innovation Capital and the Center for Financial Services Innovation has announced that their portfolio company has been acquired by PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL).
As quoted in the press release:
CFSI, the nation’s authority on financial health, made an early investment in TIO Networks in 2005. Core, a venture capital firm investing in leading financial technology companies, invested in TIO in 2013 as part of their mandate to create value for everyday and underserved Americans.
TIO is a cloud-based multi-channel bill payment processor that has processed over $7 billion in payments in 2016 for its 14 million customers. The company delivers convenient access to secure bill pay via kiosk, walk-in, mobile and web solutions.
“Our exceptional financial return is further enhanced by the fact that TIO is one of the most impactful fintechs in the industry, now becoming part of PayPal,” said Arjan Schütte, founder and managing partner of Core.
“PayPal’s acquisition of TIO represents one of CFSI’s greatest impacts to date,” said Jennifer Tescher, founder and CEO of CFSI. “In TIO, we made an early investment that helped a strong innovator become a financial health champion, and the company has built an incredible business around a real consumer pain point, shaped it, and demonstrated that it can be done profitably. Under the larger umbrella of PayPal, TIO should scale even further to benefit more Americans.”
Seventy-nine percent of TIO’s customers are low-to-moderate income, of which a majority pays their bills by giving cash to a teller at a convenience or other retail location. One of the reasons both CFSI and Core invested is that these bills, when expedited, can be extremely expensive. When Core invested in 2013, TIO saved its customers $192 per year on walk-in bill pay charges, relative to the most common alternatives in the market. This translates to an aggregate savings of $290 million in that year alone. TIO is one of the most impactful companies in Core’s portfolio in terms of number of customers served and ratio of underserved customers.