Recharge taps into Gaming Cards market with Startselect acquisition

By Gloria Methri

Recharge, a specialist in the prepaid payments industry has announced its acquisition of Startselect, a European digital gift and gaming card company. This move positions the company on course to generate 750 million EUR in annual sales in 2024.

Since 2010, Recharge has been on an aggressive growth path with its online ‘supermarket’ for digital gift cards and mobile top-ups. It was one of the first companies to offer easy online purchases of digital prepaid cards through their webshops and apps. Since its conception, the company has processed over 100 million transactions for satisfied customers globally.

This is Recharge’s first achievement in its M&A strategy to consolidate the digital prepaid payments market. The company aims to close another 2-3 acquisitions in the next 12 months.

The acquired firm, Startselect, is known for providing a high-quality digital marketplace for gamers with a broad assortment of gaming products  The acquisition strengthens Recharge’s diversified prepaid product offerings, now adding Startselect’s stronghold in the gaming cards market.

Günther Vogelpoel, CEO of Recharge, commented, “Consolidation has been a theme in FinTech in the recent period and I have no doubt in the value of this combination for our company. I am also excited to welcome the Startselect team to the Recharge family. Combining our strengths and capabilities leads to a powerful competitive position in the industry. Together, with our larger scale, we can offer an even better service to prepaid users worldwide.”

Max Gudden, Founder of Startselect, shared, “I feel proud of the whole team at Startselect that made this milestone possible. Being a part of Recharge starts a new chapter for us, where we can reach new heights. We are eager to continue our growth path together.”

This acquisition comes after the company’s recent expansion into the US and Canada with Blackhawk. Startselect will extend Recharge’s consumer label offering, which includes global shop Recharge.com and country-specific labels Beltegoed.nl, Recharge.fr, Guthaben.de, Herladen.com, and Mobiletopup.co.uk. With the addition of Startselect, the company continues to build out its global network of digital marketplaces with prepaid payment products.