Australian tech entrepreneur sells payments business for $106 million

London-based IT entrepreneur Phillip McGriskin has enjoyed a spectacular payday, selling his payments processing business Envoy Services to a larger rival for $106 million.

McGriskin and his partner Paul Townsend set up Envoy just five years ago. The business has 12 subsidiaries and more than 70 staff (including 20 in a Swedish division). This year the business will process $5 billion in payments.

“Within five years Envoy has become a market leader in processing non-credit card global payments,” McGriskin told Britain’s The Times newspaper.

“This is a credit to the whole team who started the business from zero, backed by a small handful of private investors and limited investment.”

McGriskin, who is just 37, moved to London from Sydney and worked in insurance for a short period before joining online payments firms Earthport and later its bigger rival, Neteller.

McGriskin and Townsend set up Envoy in 2006, receiving backing from a number of eCommerce figures including the founder of Sportingbet, Mark Blandford, who reportedly owns an 11% stake in the business.

The company that bought Envoy is WorldPay, which is on an expansion drive after being acquired itself six months ago by a private equity consortium that includes Advent International and Bain Capital.

McGriskin will now join WorldPay’s eCommerce board after the takeover.

“We think that scale is going to play a vital part in this market and, by tying up with WorldPay, we’ve immediately given ourselves scale,” he told The Times.

Exactly how much McGriskin will personally receive from the sale is not clear – estimates put the figure in the range of $11 million to $50 million.

However, the keen surfer will get to enjoy more of the proceeds than he would have a year ago, after Britain’s Tory Government recently increased the level of capital gains an entrepreneur could receive over their lifetime from £5 million to £10 million.

“I believe the Government support for entrepreneurs was a pivotal part of our success,” McGriskin told the Daily Mail.