Average exit valuation multiples (price/sales) of private payments companies have bumped up since 2010, while median exit valuation multiples have stayed level.
Since 2007, the payments space has seen strong exit activity from firms specializing in money transfer services to transaction processing to mobile payments. And the range of exit valuation multiples for private payments companies varies widely as well from going from 0.41x at the very low end to a lofty 240.0x. Over this period, the average price/sales (aka P/S or price/revenue) multiple has stood at 22.6x and the median at 5.3x. (Note: the underlying transaction level data is available on CB Insights using valuation multiples search).
More recently, average payments P/S multiples have risen from 17.6x between 2007 and 2009 to 28.1x since 2010. Interestingly, the median exit valuation multiple has held at 5.3x over both periods. The chart below shows the distribution of exit valuation multiples in the payments market since 2007.
