[Germany] Berlin-based SponsorPay has acquired Hamburg-based GratisPay, creating Europe’s leading provider of advertisement-based payment systems.
The acquisition means that the combined property covers the monetization of the majority of the major online and social game publishers across Europe, including Gameforge, Bigpoint, InnoGames and Frogster.
It’s also an aggressive move on the part of SponsorPay, backed by Team Europe Ventures, considering that both startups were only founded in the past year.
“Between our two companies, we already serve the majority of Europe’s top 10 publishers of online and social games” says CEO Andreas Bodczek in a statement. “Bringing the two platforms together will enable us to offer both publishers and advertisers an exceedingly attractive portfolio.”
Despite the acquisition, both the companies’ brands and staffing will remain intact, says SponsorPay. While on the product side, the advertising offerings will be combined.
Moving forward, the plan is to continue to move beyond MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games) and “heighten the companies’ presence in the social media games and applications market”, building on the success had with French casual games publisher Cafe.com, says SponsorPay.