Bottomline Technologies of the US have announced that they are to acquire UK Bacs processing firm Albany Software. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Formed in 1989, Albany is used by more than 5000 businesses to streamline, automate and manage processes involving the collection of direct debits and electronic payments. Bottomline are aiming to 'realise operating synergies and accelerate their cloud innovations for businesses of all sizes.' Similar reasoning was used to justify the takeover of Direct Debit Limited in March 2011.

This recipe is clearly working and profitable. Bottomline recently reported revenues for the 4th quarter of $61.4 million, an increase of $7.1 million, or 13%, from the 4th quarter of last year. Subscription and transaction revenues, which are primarily related to the company's banking, legal spend management and Paymode-X cloud-based applications, increased 64% from the fourth quarter of last year to $28.0 million.