Acquisitions · Mobile payments software
TIS takes control of US mobile payments firm Sequent for about $26 million
- Buyer
- TIS (Tokyo)
- Target
- Sequent Software, California
- Value
- About $26M (about ¥2.85B) to raise its stake from 13.1% to 61.6%
- Status
- Agreed January 21, 2020; expected to close January 31, 2020. TIS sold its Sequent shares in March 2023.
- Date
- 2020-01-21
IT services group TIS agreed to raise its stake in Sequent Software, a California developer of tokenization technology for mobile payments, from 13.1% to 61.6% for about $26 million. The deal combined buying existing shares, subscribing to new shares and turning loans into equity, which cleared Sequent's negative net worth. TIS had led Sequent's $16 million funding round in 2017.
Why it matters
TIS wanted its own payment technology for digital wallet services in Japan and Asia. It later exited, selling the stake in 2023, a reminder that small tech buys can be reversed.
About Sequent
Sequent was founded in 2010 and is based in Santa Clara, California. Its tokenization technology replaces card numbers with stand-in codes so phones and other devices can pay safely. Before the deal it had sales of only about ¥95 million and an operating loss of about ¥700 million. TIS first teamed up with it in 2017, when TIS was launching a digital wallet service.
The exit
TIS did not keep Sequent for long. According to MarketScreener, Chardon Holdings agreed in March 2023 to buy a 60% stake from TIS, and the sale closed at the end of that month. TIS's own history says it transferred all its Sequent shares outside the group.
Sources
Kakehashi M&A News home
