London-based Alaric Systems has been sold to a subsidiary of US firm NCR Corporation by investors including NVM Private Equity (NVM) and Foresight Group.

The $84 million (£51.3 million) transaction follows a period of growth which has seen the payment processing and fraud prevention software company grow to 117 employees across six global offices and 1.6 billion transactions a month.

Exiting investor NVM first became involved with Alaric in 2000 when it injected £2.3 million, reportedly in line with fraud becoming a ‘growing burden’ on the financial industry. Since then, the firm has taken its commitment up to £5 million – alongside Foresight, which has invested £2.4 million.

Mike Alford, managing director of Alaric Systems and original deal lead back in 2000, comments, ‘NVM has been a major support over the years providing both finance and commercial input, and Tim Levett has been our chairman for the last five years.

‘The finance from NVM and Foresight has helped to ensure we have got to the stage where things are really booming.’

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Alaric’s new owner is headquartered in Georgia, USA and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Its services include consumer transaction technologies associated with the retail, financial, travel and telecom industries.

Levett believes that Alaric has been a rewarding investment in ‘every sense’. ‘Over the long period of our investment, we have always believed in the concept of innovative card authorisation and fraud detection systems, and it is a credit to the team that they have taken their products through to becoming technical market leaders in the payments market,’ he adds.

‘Technical excellence has been the key, and Mike has built a world-leading team to deliver this.’