Nexi paid $140-150M for Orderbird to put hospitality POS at its SMB core

Orderbird provides point-of-sale products and services for restaurants and hospitality businesses, with 14,000 active clients; Nexi is the Italian payments giant formed by merging with Nets and SIA into a $12.5 billion group.

Nexi bet that owning a hospitality point-of-sale company could anchor its European SMB strategy — ‘what Clover did for First Data’

Orderbird had raised around $55 million from Nets/Concardis, Digital+ Partners and Metro Group.

Orderbird built cloud point-of-sale for German restaurants; payments group Nets had held a stake via its Concardis acquisition and raised it to 40% in a September 2021 secondary at a €100 million valuation.

Through COVID, Orderbird grew ARR 35% and turned profitable — not from a boom but by right-sizing and cutting pre-COVID cash burn. It weighed other offers, including from another POS company and an investment from US restaurant giant Toast, but chose a full exit as the surer path to scaling.

Nexi fully acquired Orderbird — officially about €100 million aggregate cash including previous share purchases, with sources valuing the all-cash deal at $140-150 million. CEO Mark Schoen and CSO/founder Jakob Schreyer stayed on, and Orderbird keeps its brand as the core of Nexi's SMB push, with banking and credit services planned next.

Gave Nexi an installed base in hospitality POS instead of building one, deepening its move into SMB financial services.

Handed Orderbird's founders a strategic owner with distribution across Europe rather than a minority investor.

Marked the shift in 2022 dealmaking: exits that looked 'decent, then not bad at all, to ultimately lucky' versus waiting for better terms.

In a freezing market, a warm bid from an existing strategic shareholder can beat a flashier name's term sheet — 'warm is the new hot'.

As of 2022-05-12 Orderbird continued under its own brand with management intact, positioned as the heart of Nexi's SMB strategy and a bigger European rival to Toast, with banking and credit services on the roadmap.