GoDaddy buys payments processor Poynt for $320 million to fill out commerce offering

Web hosting pioneer GoDaddy of Scottsdale, Arizona Tuesday afternoon said it will buy privately held Poynt of Palo Alto, California for $320 million in cash to add to its portfolio of commerce offerings.

Poynt, founded in 2013, provides payments processing, including contactless in-store terminals and online and phone payment acceptance technology. 

GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani said the acquisition will "accelerate" GoDaddy's effort to "provide a complete suite of commerce and payment services to address this critical customer need and focus on a large addressable market opportunity."

Poynt has more than 100,000 merchants using its software, representing $16 billion in annual business, or Gross Merchandise Volume, said GoDaddy. 

"We've built leading e-commerce capabilities that today allow small businesses to easily sell on their sites, across major marketplaces and the most popular social networks, and now we will help make them successful everywhere," said Bhutani. 

Poynt's payments will be integrated into the Web hosting, marketing and Wordpress services of GoDaddy, the company said. 

The chief executive of Poynt, Osama Bedier, will join the GoDaddy team and report to Bhutani as head of a newly created Commerce Division, said the company.  

The deal features an additional $45 million in compensation to Poynt subject to meeting performance and employment conditions over a three-year period.

Poynt has received $128 million in venture capital financing in four rounds, from firms including Matrix Management and the venture capital unit of Stanford University, according to FactSet.

The deal would seem to be an effort for GoDaddy to round-out its commerce offerings to be more competitive with Shopify. 

Shares of GoDaddy were up just under 2% in late trading. Shopify shares were down slightly at $1,070.