Online financial services startup Payoneer Inc., a company often compared to PayPal Holdings Inc., today announced plans to go public via a special-purpose acquisition company in a $3.3 billion deal.

Payoneer will merge with FTAC Olympus Acquisition Corp. and as a part of the deal will receive $300 million from investors that include Wellington Management, Dragoneer Investment Group, Fidelity Management & Research and Franklin Templeton.

Founded in 2005, Payoneer offers a range of online financial services, including online money transfer and digital payment services with a cross-border payment platform pitched at empowering businesses, online sellers and freelancers to pay and get paid globally.

Whereas PayPal is perhaps best known for online payments through e-commerce sites, Payoneer has become particularly popular for paying freelancers and remote workers, although both companies offer a similar suite of services. Those services include marketplace payments, business-to-business accounts payable and accounts receivable, merchant services, working capital, risk and compliance.

Payoneer has found a willing audience, processing more than $44 billion in volume in more than 7,000 trade corridors in 2020. Customers include Google LLC, Airbnb Inc., Upwork Inc., Shutterstock Inc. and Getty Images Inc.

“Technology is transforming commerce globally, bringing down borders and making it possible for entrepreneurs from all over the world to build a digital business,” Scott Galit, chief executive officer of Payoneer, said in a statement. “This new way of doing business requires a global financial platform built for the digital age. Payoneer’s purpose-built platform provides global connectivity with localized capabilities, layered on top of a robust and scalable compliance, risk and regulatory infrastructure.”

The choice of Payoneer to go public via a SPAC would have been remarkable 12 months ago but SPACs have become a more regular path to public markets. SPACs are entities that are created for the sole purpose of buying another firm and taking it public. They became growingly popular in 2020 as a way to take a startup public without going through a traditional initial public offering.

While 242 SPACs launched in 2020, as of late January, the number of new SPACs in 2021 was sitting at five per day. Companies that have recently announced that they are going public via a SPAC include smart lock maker Latch Inc., Lidar startup Aeva Inc. and fintech giant SoFi.

Coming into its SPAC listing, Payoneer has raised $270 million in venture capital from investors that included Susquehanna Growth Equity and CBC Capital.

Photo: Payoneer