Payzone is an Irish consumer

payment service provider A payment service provider (PSP) is a third-party company that allows businesses to accept electronic payments, such as credit card and debit card payments. PSPs act as intermediaries between those who make payments, i.e. consumers, and those who ...

company based in Dublin. The company processes electronic transactions, including debit and credit card transactions mobile phone top ups, M50 motorway toll payments, Leap travel cards, local property tax payments, pay-by-phone parking, pre-paid and bill pay utility and parcel collection services. , the company employed approximately 80 people in Ireland. Based in

Sandyford Sandyford () is a suburb of Dublin, located in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Ireland. Sandyford Business District makes up much of the suburb and encompasses 4 business parks: Sandyford Business Park, Stillorgan Business Park, Central Park and S ...

, it is a subsidiary of a joint venture between

Allied Irish Banks Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c. is one of the so-called Big Four (banking)#Ireland, Big Four commercial banks in the Republic of Ireland. AIB offers a full range of personal, business and corporate banking services. The bank also offers a range of ge ...

and

Fiserv Fiserv, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational corporation, multinational financial technology company headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Fiserv provides financial technology and services to clients across the financial services sector, incl ...

History

The company was founded in 1989 as ITG Group. It operated as ITG Group until 1999 and then operated as Alphyra (1999-2007) and was listed on the

London Stock Exchange The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...

under ticker . By 2006, the Payzone Group had two businesses. The first was a managed terminal network in the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Greece and Romania. Its main services included mobile phone top-up, utility top-up, bill-payment solutions, electronic gift vouchers and electronic funds transfer processing. The second business was an independent white-label ATM's in the convenience sector in the UK and Germany. In 2010, the company was acquired by

Duke Street Capital Duke Street Capital is a private equity firm focused on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments in middle-market companies in Western Europe, particularly the UK and France. Duke Street invests across four sectors: consumer, healthcare, ...

in a debt for equity deal, Duke Street started the process of splitting up the business so that each business could focus on its own market. By 2014, the company had sold its Swedish business to Nets Group. In 2015, Duke Street Capital sold Payzone to the investments company Carlyle Cardinal Ireland for €43.3m. In 2018, the UK payment side of the business was split off and sold to the UK post office company

Post Office Limited Post Office Limited, formerly Post Office Counters Limited and commonly known as the Post Office, is a state-owned retail post office company in the United Kingdom that provides a wide range of postal and non-postal related products including po ...

, creating a separate entity

Payzone (United Kingdom) Payzone UK branded as Payzone is a British consumer payments acceptance network that has been part of Post Office Limited since 2018. Payzone UK is primarily engaged in the acceptance of cash payments for the services of its partners through ...

that continues to use the same brand name in the United Kingdom but is no longer connected with Payzone Ireland. In 2019, the Irish company was acquired through a joint venture between AIB and US company

First Data First Data Corporation was a financial services company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The company's STAR Network provides nationwide domestic debit acceptance at more than 2 million retail POS, ATM, and at online outlets f ...

, with the companies holding 75% and 25% respectively. Later in 2019, First Data was acquired by

Products

Payzone's products and services include: * ''Retail services'' - Payzone provides

payment terminal A payment terminal, also known as a point of sale (POS) terminal, credit card machine, card reader, PIN pad, EFTPOS terminal (or by the older term as PDQ terminal which stands for "Process Data Quickly"), is a device which interfaces with payme ...

s to retailers, via which customers make payments for mobile phone top ups, M50 motorway toll payments, Leap travel cards, some gift cards, local property tax payments, parking fees, pre-paid and bill-pay utilities, waste payments and parcel collection services. The terminals also support credit and debit card acceptance for goods and services that retailers sell directly to their customers. * ''Credit and debit card processing'' - It also provides terminals to small to medium-sized businesses in the 'general retail' sector (beauty salons, clothing stores, restaurants, etc) that allow those businesses to accept credit and debit card payments. * ''Online payments'' - It also provides services to retailers to process transactions online. These include online toll payments, prepaid electricity and transport ticketing. * ''Mobile payments'' - Payzone operates a mobile payment service, which uses

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

and

interactive voice response Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that allows telephone users to interact with a computer-operated telephone system through the use of voice and DTMF tones input with a keypad. In telephony, IVR allows customers to interact with a ...

, for Pinergy and Electric Ireland. It also owns and operates Parking Tag, a cashless mobile service which allows motorists to pay for parking in certain locations.

References

{{Digital payment providers Financial services companies established in 1989 Payment service providers Financial services companies of Ireland Sandyford