Barclays to sell stake in British payments business to Brookfield

By Lawrence White

LONDON (Reuters) -Barclays has agreed terms for Brookfield Asset Management to buy most of its British payments business, the bank said on Thursday, ending a more than year-long effort to offload the business which processes payments for retailers.

Under the complex terms of the deal, the two parties will create a standalone entity for the business, into which Barclays plans to invest approximately 400 million pounds ($528.2 million), Barclays said.

The British bank remains the sole shareholder in that unit for the first three years, but Brookfield may acquire an approximately 70% ownership interest, the bank said, on top of its initial 10% stake, and subject to certain conditions.

Those include Barclays recovering the full value of its investment into the partnership. The bank said it expects to retain the remaining 20% stake.

Barclays has been trying to offload all or part of the business since December 2023, having said it was no longer the best owner for the unit which processes payments on behalf of retailers.

The British bank follows other lenders in cutting back investments in the payments processing business, which is becoming a scale game dominated by fewer players.

Valuations in European payments firms have fallen amid concerns over revenue outlooks at companies such as Worldline, Nexi and Adyen.

Barclays initially sought a valuation of more than 2 billion pounds ($2.65 billion) for the whole business, Reuters has reported, but found few takers given the technological complexities of any such deal.

The business provides critical infrastructure to the UK economy, processing billions of pounds of payments annually for small businesses as well as domestic and international corporate clients, Barclays said.

The deal will not have any material impact on the bank's financial guidance or targets, it said.

($1 = 0.7573 pounds)

(Reporting by Lawrence White; Editing by Jan Harvey and Ros Russell)