Attra acquired by New York-based company Synechron

By Edil Corneille

Today, New York-based Synechron, a digital transformation consulting firm for the financial services industry, announced the acquisition of Australia’s Attra, a technology services and solutions provider headquartered in Melbourne and focused on the banking, finance, and payments industries. Attra is a pure play payments solutions provider with a global delivery footprint in Australia, New Zealand, North America, Europe, the Middle East, and APAC. It has development centres in Melbourne, Australia; Dubai, UAE; and Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune, India.

Founded in 1995, Attra brings Synechron 25 years of deep domain expertise in providing consulting, application development & maintenance, and quality engineering services to clients worldwide, across the payments value chain. Attra’s comprehensive cards and payments services complement the digital, consulting, and technology services that Synechron currently provides for its clients.

Attra’s core offerings span the entire software lifecycle, with end-to-end offerings across four key industry verticals – FI and payment companies, third-party payment processors and payment gateways, retailers, and payments. Synechron will further strengthen its technology capabilities through the addition of Attra’s core technology horizontals focused on payment & banking platforms; intelligent automation; IT infrastructure & cloud; UI/UX, mobility & channels; and information management.

Post-acquisition, Attra will retain its brand identity and become a Synechron company. Attra’s global team of around 2,000 technology experts in the banking and payments domains will add to Synechron’s already vast pool of talent. Synechron’s and Attra’s combined global footprint will enable both to further expand its geographic span. This alignment will also enable the co-development of future-looking innovative solutions, both through Synechron’s global Financial Innovation Labs (FinLabs) and Attra Labs, which engineers payment solutions.

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Avendus Capital is Attra’s financial advisor on this transaction.

Faisal Husain, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Synechron explained, “We provide our clients with a comprehensive set of digital transformation capabilities and the acquisition of Attra enables us to strengthen our service offerings. Moving forward, our combined workforce will top 10,000 employees and annual revenue of $650M+. The enhanced competencies that Attra brings will allow us to further advance our clients’ banking & digital payment technology services while ensuring regulatory compliance.” He added, “Attra’s end-to-end payments technology services will blend nicely with our digital innovation that is at the very core of Synechron’s DNA. We welcome the Attra team into the Synechron family.”

Chris van Buuren, CEO of Attra commented, “The payments industry is experiencing a full-fledged digital transformation that is being fueled by exciting new technology advancements and regulatory and competitive changes. We are very excited to join with the passionate team at Synechron as we continue our mission to be strategic partners with organizations in the financial services industry and empower them with a full suite of digitally-led technology services and solutions in payments.”

This acquisition of Attra marks the second acquisition Synechron has closed in the past six weeks. On October 23, Synechron announced its acquisition of Citihub Digital, a London and New York-based technology consulting firm for the financial services industry. Citihub Digital brought Synechron expert competencies on application modernization, cloud enablement, cybersecurity and operating model transformation. Both acquisitions renew Synechron’s deep commitment to partner with top-notch digital transformation companies and their domain experts in accelerating digital for the entire financial services ecosystem across the globe.