FIS Acquires Goldman Sachs-Backed Start-Up Amount

FIS stock is down 21% this year. (Dreamstime)

Key Points

About This Summary

• Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) acquired financial-tech start-up Amount, which provides technology for online services.
• Amount, valued at $1 billion in 2021, counts TD Bank, Fifth Third Bancorp, and Barclays among its clients.
• FIS aims to integrate Amount’s technology across its products to enhance digital offerings. Its shares have fallen 60% since February 2020.

Fidelity National Information Services has acquired a financial-technology start-up in a move underscoring how banks, wealth-management firms, fund managers, and other financial-services firms are trying to upgrade their digital offerings and pull in more customers online.

The Jacksonville, Fla.-based company, better known as FIS, acquired the 158-person start-up Amount, according to executives and a press release viewed by Barron’s. The start-up was formed as an independent company in 2020 after it split off from fintech firm Avant.

Amount is based in Chicago and sells tech to companies looking to improve or add new services for clients online, such as opening new checking and savings accounts and applying for loans. Amount counts TD Bank, Fifth Third Bancorp, and Barclays among its clients and was last valued at $1 billion after a Series D fundraise in 2021.

Peter Boyer, the interim head of banking at FIS, said in an interview that Amount would eventually provide the tech that supports account-opening across all FIS products. Absorbing Amount will also expand what FIS can offer, such as account-opening options for wealth-management clients and credit- and debit-card issuer processing.

“You order Ubers from your phone, you can order groceries, or DoorDash . Consumers have come to expect that same experience—not just in the servicing of their deposits and lending accounts, but also how they open them,” Boyer said, citing research that shows more people say they don’t require human interaction as part of their financial services.

FIS has offered tools that allow consumers to open accounts for products such as credit cards and loans online, but “they weren’t fully integrated, and each one was sort of isolated,” he said. “What Amount really brings is a single suite of integrated products for how you open an account.”

Adam Hughes, the chief executive of Amount, is set to join Boyer’s leadership team.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, and a spokesman for FIS declined to specify them. Amount’s backers included WestCap, Goldman Sachs’s growth-equity investors, QED Investors, and Hanaco. After its last fundraise in 2021, Amount said it had raised $243 million in total capital since it became a stand-alone company. FIS and Account have had a partnership since 2021.

FIS has made a series of deals—including acquisitions of Dragonfly Financial Technologies and embedded finance start-up Bond—since CEO Stephanie Ferris took over in 2022.

At a conference held by Goldman earlier this month, Ferris said the company would allocate some $1 billion to mergers and acquisitions each year. FIS is now set to acquire a unit of Global Payments in a deal valued at $13.5 billion as part of a deal to sell its minority stake in Worldpay to Global Payments for $6.6 billion in pretax value.

Among the challenges and opportunities for Ferris is contending with an underperforming stock. Since hitting a record high in February 2020, FIS shares have fallen 60%. The stock is down 21% this year, while the S&P 500 has advanced 13%.

Write to Rebecca Ungarino at rebecca.ungarino@barrons.com