NMI Acquires Sphere’s Commercial Division, Simplifying Payments for Partners

The combined solution will provide partners enhanced underwriting and risk management capabilities

SCHAUMBURG, IL – OCTOBER 12, 2023 – NMI, a leading full commerce enablement technology company, has acquired the Sphere Commercial Division. The acquisition will strengthen NMI’s underwriting and risk management capabilities as well as allow NMI partners, including independent software vendors, independent sales organizations and fintech innovators, to create merchant accounts within the existing NMI platform.

While 67% of merchants see payments as a highly strategic area of focus right now, they often require an outside partner that offers diverse payment capabilities to help them identify which payment tools to invest in and to support with implementation of those tools. Adding Sphere’s Commercial Division underwriting and risk management capabilities will allow NMI partners to monetize more of the value chain by offering additional payment capabilities to their merchants. While NMI’s partners will still be able to use their own merchant accounts as they always have, this acquisition will give partners another option to create a merchant account through the NMI platform, allowing them to offer the increased flexibility that merchants demand.

“The addition of Sphere’s Commercial Division allows us to add yet another module to our stack of payment enablement tools, providing our partners with the modularity and choice to better customize payment experiences for their merchants,” said Vijay Sondhi, CEO of NMI. “These added capabilities of underwriting, risk management and merchant account creation are a game changer, not only for our partners but also for their merchants in the race to provide the most convenient, painless experience for end consumers.”

NMI welcomes the Sphere Commercial Division employees into the NMI community, and the office in Irving, Texas will be retained. Berenson & Company served as financial advisor to NMI and William Blair served as financial advisor to Sphere’s Commercial Division in connection with the transaction. Terms of the acquisition are undisclosed, and this acquisition will not affect any of Sphere’s other entities.

“It is a natural fit to combine our capabilities with NMI’s platform because our vision aligns well with NMI’s goal to provide partners access to any and all the payment capabilities they could need,” said Tom Bannon, COO and President, Sphere Commercial Division. As part of the acquisition, Tom will join NMI’s leadership team as the Senior Vice President, Partner Monetization. “Partners today are looking to own as much of the payments ecosystem as possible, and we are adding another layer to that by combining forces with NMI. Our risk management and underwriting capabilities fit very nicely into NMI’s vision of full commerce enablement as we give partners the choice and ownership they crave.”

The deal comes on the heels of NMI’s acquisition of Agreement Express’s payments solutions in December 2022, which enhanced NMI’s merchant sign-up offerings. This latest acquisition adds to NMI’s rapid growth in supporting over 3,900 ISV, ISO and fintech partners that enable 280,000+ merchants on the platform, resulting in more than 2.3 billion transactions and $200B+ in payments volume.

Looking forward, NMI will continue to focus on adding new capabilities to enable payments from sign-up to pay-out. To learn more about NMI’s expanded offerings, visit: https://www.nmi.com/.