CyberSource
Cybersource is an American payment gateway founded in 1994.
In November 2007, Cybersource acquired the U.S. small business payment services provider Authorize.net for $565 million.
On April 22, 2010, Visa Inc. acquired Cybersource for $2 billion.
History
CyberSource was founded in 1994 by William S. McKiernan. The company was created to provide online payment and fraud management services for medium and large-sized merchants. It initially launched software.net, an online software store, and built the payment infrastructure for its own e-commerce operations.During the dot-com boom, CyberSource went public. The company commenced its initial public offering on June 23, 1999, issuing 4 million shares of common stock at an offering price of $11 per share. The company was listed under the stock ticker CYBS.
In 2007, CyberSource announced its acquisition of Authorize.Net, a provider of payment solutions for small businesses, for $565 million. This move expanded CyberSource's market reach from its traditional base of mid-sized and enterprise customers to include small businesses.
On April 21, 2010, Visa Inc. announced it had agreed to acquire CyberSource for approximately $2 billion in cash. The primary strategic rationale for the acquisition was to accelerate Visa's growth in the e-commerce sector. A key aspect of the strategy was the plan to combine CyberSource's detailed merchant-level transaction data with Visa's extensive network-wide data. During the acquisition announcement, Visa executives stated that combining these two data sets was a "key synergy calculation" and would allow for the creation of more powerful and predictive fraud prevention services.
The acquisition was completed on July 21, 2010, at which point CyberSource became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Visa Inc.