When San Diego-based Global Analytics raised $30 million in debt financing last summer, CEO Michael Thiemann said he planned to introduce its online financial services business in the United States once its Zebit operating company was well established in England.
Today Global Analytics is announcing a slight change in plans.
The San Diego financial analytics company founded in 2003 is acquiring Workpays.me, a financial technology startup based near Philadelphia, in King of Prussia, PA.
Workpays.me operates an e-commerce website with over 50,000 brand name items, and enables the gainfully employed to make big-ticket purchases of computers, furniture, and other goods with no financing charges or fees. Instead, consumers make direct payments from their bank account or through payroll deductions for their online purchases.
Financial terms of the buyout were not disclosed.
Thiemann said in a recent interview that the Workpays.me acquisition will accelerate Global Analytics’ entry into the U.S. market “with a business model that’s consistent with what we’re doing, but that’s completely disruptive to what exists here now.”
Instead of introducing its Zebit operations in the United States and trying to expand, Thiemann says Workpays.me provides a ready-made entrée for serving “the underbanked” here.
As Thiemann explained to me last year, the underbanked are consumers who typically don’t have a credit card or leave much of a financial paper trail. Many live from paycheck to paycheck, using cash and prepaid cards, so it’s hard for them to get loans. Many migrants are underbanked, and they are estimated to represent between
