CardX CEO Interviewed by Law360 on “Digital Payments Deal-Making” Following M&A Wave
“Although the deal announcements are getting much of the attention, the success of the consolidation in the sector hinges on the companies’ ability to integrate their people, culture and technologies.
‘There’s been a lot of excitement about M&A, but I would say consolidation in itself is neither good or bad. I think execution makes it so,’ said Jonathan Razi, the CEO and founder of CardX, which provides cost-sharing service for credit card processing to business, government and education entities.
‘People like to talk about the significance of deals in dollar value. But I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about the skill of merger integration. I think we’re really going to see a lot of difference in the quality of the merger integration that happens down the road,’ Razi said.
That process opens up both the acquirer and the target company to the risk that they will be unable to hold onto the best employees, will struggle to bring together two different IT platforms or will face hurdles in preserving a culture that may be integral to one company’s success.
‘As the acquiring company, how do you protect your core culture? Working with these companies, I can tell you not all of these processors have the same culture, and some are probably better or worse,’ Razi said.”