Dorsey & Whitney advised fintech company Galileo Financial Technologies, Inc. (Galileo) in connection with its announced agreement to be acquired by Social Finance, Inc. (SoFi) for $1.2 billion.
Galileo's digital payments platform enables critical checking and savings account-like functionality via its powerful open APIs, providing companies with an easy way to create sophisticated consumer and B2B financial services. The company's offerings are accessible via mobile, desktop, and a physical debit card. Galileo's APIs power functionalities including account set-up, funding, direct deposit, ACH transfer, IVR, early paycheck direct deposit, bill pay, transaction notifications, check balance, and point of sale authorization as well as dozens of other capabilities. Galileo processed over $53B of annualized payments volume in March 2020, up from $26B in September 2019, with accelerating growth. SoFi Money is already tightly integrated with Galileo's payment platform including several of its leading account and events API functionalities.
Galileo will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary of SoFi. Galileo will collaborate with SoFi to accelerate the technology roadmap needs for consumer financial offerings, as well as offering the full SoFi suite of products and services to those Galileo partners who are looking to broaden their offering to better meet the needs of their customers.
The Dorsey transaction team was led by Corporate Partner Nolan Taylor and included Corporate Partners Aaron Murdock and Craig Frame, and Associates Neela Pack, Niels Bybee, Erin Rider, Luke Bell and Brenden Stuart. The Dorsey transaction team also included specialists from across the Firm providing tax, executive compensation and benefits, employment, privacy and data security, tech commerce, financial regulatory, finance, antitrust and insurance legal services to support the transaction.