Jack Henry & Associates' announcement today that it is buying iPay Technologies is a logical follow-up to similar acquisitions by two of Jack Henry's major competitors in the financial services core processing and integrated services business, according to an industry analyst.
"This deal is very much a response to the acquisition of CheckFree by Fiserv (for $4.4 billion in 2007) and Metavante by FIS (for $2.9 billion in 2009)," said Gwen Bezard, senior analyst at Aite Group in Boston.
"iPay was one of the last independent big payment processors and I think it's a natural evolution, at the high level, of what we've seen over the past few years in the convergence of core banking systems and payment processing," Bezard added.
He also said, "It's a logical pass. If I were a client of iPay, I wouldn't be concerned at all by this acquisition."
