Fintech M&A heats up as OPay, Airtel Africa line up big-ticket IPOs (TWIF 5/3)

OPay is working with Citi, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan on an IPO, marking a major milestone for the Nigeria-focused payments platform.

Airtel Africa is targeting a London IPO for its mobile money unit, Airtel Money, which could raise up to $2 billion and value the business at $10 billion, It amounts to a boost for the LSE as fintechs like Klarna, Wise, and Revolut have gravitated toward New York.

Western & Southern Financial Group acquired Till Financial, a family banking platform offering tools for savings goals, chore tracking and allowance management, to diversify its portfolio beyond traditional insurance and deepen its direct-to-consumer strategy for families. 

Adyen agreed to acquire Berlin-based loyalty and incentives platform Talone.One for €750 million. It marks the Dutch payments giant's first-ever acquisition.

CVC Capital Partners is mulling a €9 billion bid to take Italian payments group Nexi private, in what would be its third attempt at the company, though the deal hinges entirely on support from the Italian government given the country's golden power rules over strategic financial infrastructure.

OppFi agreed to acquire BNC National Bank for $130 million, combining its online consumer lending platform with BNC's national bank charter to expand into SBA lending, secured consumer lending and wealth management.

MoonPay acquired Israeli crypto security startup Sodot for around $100 million in an all-stock deal, using it as the security foundation for MoonPay Institutional, a new unit targeting banks and asset managers led by former CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham.

ANZ agreed to acquire French payments giant Worldline's 51% stake in their joint venture ANZ Worldline for $89 million, bringing its merchant-acquiring business fully in-house as part of its 2030 strategy.

AngelList acquired solopreneur fintech Carry to build private-market financial products, while Lettuce Financial separately acquired Carry's retirement platform serving 4,000 individuals with $225 million in assets under custody. 

American Express agreed to acquire Hyper, an agentic expense management startup backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to fold its AI automation capabilities into an expense management platform Amex plans to release before year-end. 

Synctera acquired compliance control testing startup Cable, bringing its automated KYC, AML and transaction monitoring verification into Synctera's BaaS platform so sponsor banks can continuously verify — rather than spot-check — that their fintech partners are compliant. 

Pine Labs acquired Indian D2C checkout platform Shopflo for around $9.3 million to build a full-stack commerce platform combining its offline payments infrastructure with Shopflo's online conversion tools, which serve over 1,000 e-commerce brands.

Finyx acquired Woodhurst, a 30-person financial services management consultancy specializing in banks and building societies.

J. Safra Sarasin Group completed its acquisition of a 71% majority stake in Saxo Bank, the Denmark-based fintech investment bank, bringing combined client assets to over $460 billion.