PYMNTS Innovation Investment Tracker

Here’s what happened in the third week of August:

The Big Takeaways for Payments and Commerce

$1.3 Billion in financial activity was observed across a variety of investment types – VC funding, private placements, etc. Of that total, $856 M was the driven by strategic or venture –backed investments. The biggest transaction was the acquisition of New Breed Holding Co. by XPO Logistics Inc. for $615 M. The second and third were twodebt funding runds for a total of $400 M for AvantCredit.

51 percent of the week’s activity was concentrated on the retail payments side and 35 percent of it was related to strategic or venture capital. On the commercial payments side New Breed Holding Co acquisiton was the biggest move, with 95 percent of the funds.

Venture backed and strategic investments on the retail payments side accounted for $210M of the total investment activity in the third week of Augsust. Of that, almost all was venture backed.

Interestingly, most of the venture and strategic backed investments were in the banking and security/fraud areas accounting for 74 percent of the total. Mobile money ($2.3 M), P2P ($0.2 M), customer acquisition/loyalty($ -) and prepaid ($-)reflected the least amount of investment activity.

The most active VCs/PEs includedVictory Park Capital ($300 Million), Jefferies ($100 Million) and Battery Ventures ($11 Million).

From a geographic perspectiveUS was the most active region, while Europe and China observed slow activity.

The median investment amount was $3.5 Million.

The Retail and Commercial Payments Top 20

Here are the top 20 investments that drove 99 percent of the funding activity in the third week of August 2014.