www.cashcard.com.au
In December 2000 Gresham Private Equity 1 invested $6 million in Electronic Banking Solutions (EBS) with a follow-on investment of $4 million in May 2001. At this time, EBS operated approximately 550 ATMs across Australia.
Private equity ownership
In October 2002, the shareholders of EBS participated in a share swap with Cashcard Australia. Gresham Private Equity also invested an additional $15 million into the merged business which brought the Fund's total investment to $25 million and resulted in the Fund becoming the largest shareholder in Cashcard.
Cashcard is Australia's leading payments system services provider and was the only independent services company to provide high volume payment services across the entire consumer electronic payments spectrum, including ATM and EFTPOS, Direct Entry and BPAY, Telephone and Internet payments.
The initial "buy and build" thesis that was behind Gresham Private Equity's initial investment in EBS was continued with Cashcard, culminating in the acquisition in July 2003 of Direct Cash who operated over 800 ATMs throughout Australia.
Exit
In April 2004, Cashcard was acquired by leading US based payments systems provider First Data Corporation and was the third exit for the Gresham Private Equity Fund I, following Eurogestion in 2002 and Repco in 2003.
The Cashcard investment achieved an IRR of 49.3 per cent per annum and a money multiple return of 2.5x.