Cardsave
The deal
Investing in the UK’s leading independent provider of merchant acquiring services
£72m
Deal size, August 2007
Fund I
Realised investment
The story
Cardsave is the UK’s leading independent provider of merchant acquiring services to small and medium sized enterprises.
Exponent worked with buy-in CEO Clive Kahn, former CEO of Travelex, to build a plan for the business. We welcomed Chairperson Alastair Lyons, who also Chairs Admiral, Serco and Towergate, at completion.
During the three years of Exponent’s ownership, we backed the team in extensive re-engineering of the salesforce: increasing productivity over 30% per salesperson and more than doubling the size of the sales team. As a result, we grew the customer base from 23,000 to 43,000, doubled revenue and increased EBITDA by 85%.
The business was acquired by WorldPay for an undisclosed sum in December 2010.