Houlihan Lokey Advises Trustpair

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Trustpair, a portfolio company of Axeleo Capital, Breega, and Tikehau Capital, has agreed to be acquired by Basware, a portfolio company of Accel-KKR.

Trustpair is the global standard for enterprise payment fraud prevention, securing payments for more than 600 world-leading organisations, including leading Fortune 500 companies. By embedding AI-driven risk intelligence directly into existing finance ecosystems, Trustpair automates manual account validation to become a centralised, strategic layer of payment security. With a global presence in New York, Paris, and London, Trustpair empowers finance teams to outsmart sophisticated fraudsters at scale.

Basware, backed by Accel-KKR, a global technology-focused investment firm, is the market leader in invoice lifecycle management. The company’s platform governs the entire accounts payable process end-to-end, across every country, ERP, and supplier. Basware is built on more than 40 years of industry firsts and is trusted by over 6,500 customers worldwide, including DHL, Heineken, and NBC Universal Media.

The transaction will deliver the industry’s first invoice lifecycle assurance covering both sides of the transaction: Basware confirming an invoice is legitimate and approved, Trustpair confirming payment reaches the intended supplier. By joining Basware, Trustpair will draw on shared intelligence spanning 2.5 billion invoices and 20 million suppliers to strengthen its validation models and accelerate its expansion into a wider customer base. The proposed acquisition will also extend Basware’s invoice lifecycle management into payment fraud prevention, complementing the invoice fraud and duplicate-detection capabilities already built into the platform. Following completion, Trustpair will continue to operate and go to market independently as a Basware company, serving customers, partners, and future customers across procurement, ERP, treasury, P2P, and payment environments.

Baptiste Collot, Co-Founder and CEO at Trustpair, said: "By bringing our capabilities together, we see the opportunity to give finance teams stronger protection across the full journey, from supplier onboarding and invoice approval through payment. Trustpair will continue to operate with the same team, platform, and commitment to our customers and partners across the finance environments they already use. Basware’s reach and resources will help us accelerate beyond what we could have achieved alone and pursue our ambition to build the market’s most advanced and intelligent enterprise fraud prevention solution, from invoice to payment.”

Jason Kurtz, CEO at Basware, commented: “We’ve spent 41 years building certainty into how $10 trillion in invoices get approved. Now we’re raising the bar by investing in Trustpair’s growth. Together, we will offer the first end-to-end invoice-to-payment assurance in the market, strengthening financial integrity and continuous compliance across the invoice lifecycle.”

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and may not be completed on the terms described or at all.

Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive sellside financial advisor to Trustpair.

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