Paysafe Ltd
NYSE:PSFE

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Paysafe Ltd
NYSE:PSFE
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Earnings Call Analysis

Q3-2023 Analysis
Paysafe Ltd

Steady Growth with Margin Improvement

The company's third-quarter financials show an 8% year-over-year volume increase to $35.1 billion with total revenue also up by 8%, amounting to $396.4 million. Notably, this growth is underpinned by strong performance in e-commerce and digital wallets. Adjusted EBITDA grew a robust 22% to $116.1 million, benefiting from reduced credit losses and operating leverage, resulting in an improved adjusted EBITDA margin of 29.3%. Despite the headwinds from foreign exchange, particularly a weaker euro impacting revenue growth by about $1.7 million, the company remains resilient with adjusted net income rising 21% to $35.3 million. The outlook for full-year reported revenue is set at $1.595 to $1.608 billion, with adjusted EBITDA expected between $454 million to $462 million.

Financial Performance and Growth Trajectory

The company reported a healthy period, with volume reaching $35.1 billion, marking an 8% increase from the previous year, and total revenue rising to $396.4 million — also an 8% increase year-over-year, or 5% on a constant currency basis. E-commerce operations within the Merchant Solutions segment accompanied by Classic Digital Wallets primarily powered this growth, with interest revenue on consumer deposits notably reinforcing these numbers. Despite foreign exchange challenges, particularly the weakening of the euro, which slightly dampened revenue growth, the company's performance largely met expectations.

Margin Improvement and Operating Leverage

A significant uptick was observed in Adjusted EBITDA, reaching $116.1 million, up 22% year-over-year (or 18% on a constant currency basis), with the corresponding margin escalating to 29.3%, a substantial 320 basis point increase. This margin enhancement was attributed primarily to a reduction in credit losses and a demonstration of augmenting operating leverage. Concurrently, a decline in total SG&A to 30.6% of revenue from the previous year’s 36.1% was also witnessed, emphasizing the ongoing efficiency improvements and cost management within the company.

Free Cash Flow and Net Income Gains

The company generated $105 million in free cash flow during the quarter, showing a high adjusted EBITDA conversion rate of 91%. On a Last Twelve Months (LTM) basis, this figure stood at $362 million, or an 81% conversion. Looking ahead, the company anticipates a full-year conversion rate in the range of 65% to 70%. Notably, adjusted net income surged by 21% year-over-year to $35.3 million, and the adjusted earnings per share (EPS) increased by 19% to $0.57, outpacing the rise in depreciation, amortization, interest expenses, and taxes.

Segment Analysis: Merchant Solutions and Digital Wallets

In the Merchant Solutions segment, volume escalated to $29.6 billion (up 7% year-over-year), and revenue increased 6% to $216.8 million, spurred by the e-commerce space and particularly the North American iGaming vertical, alongside other sectors like travel and fintech services. The SMB market also exhibited robust growth across various verticals. Meanwhile, the Digital Wallets segment enjoyed an 18% year-over-year volume increase to $5.6 billion, with revenues climbing 12% to $182.9 million, thanks to the classic digital wallet's robust performance.

Debt Management and Leveraging Strategy

The company's focus on conscientious debt management has led to a total debt standing at $2.5 billion by the end of the quarter, partially alleviated by repayments and repurchases totaling $22 million during the period. Year-to-date, the figure for repaid debt reached approximately $112 million. Net debt was reported at $2.3 billion, and the leverage ratio was reduced to 5.1x from 5.8x at the end of the previous year, with expectations to hit around 5x by year-end, surpassing yearly targets.

Capital Allocation Strategy and Share Repurchase Program

With a stable generation of cash flow and a track record of reducing net leverage, the company announced a $50 million share repurchase program. This initiative is part of a broader capital allocation strategy, which remains focused on debt reduction and further investments to foster long-term growth.

Outlook for 2023 Amidst Foreign Exchange Volatility

Looking forward, the company reiterates its revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance for 2023, aiming for reported revenue between $1.595 billion to $1.608 billion and adjusted EBITDA ranging from $454 million to $462 million, projecting an adjusted EBITDA margin between 28.5% to 29%. However, the guidance remains susceptible to foreign exchange fluctuations, especially a weaker euro against the U.S. dollar, which has the potential to push the final results closer to the lower end of the forecasted range.

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2023-Q3

from 0
Operator

Hello, and welcome to the Paysafe Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call webcast. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Kirsten Nielsen, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Kirsten.

K
Kirsten Nielsen
executive

Thank you, and welcome to Paysafe's earnings conference call for the third quarter of 2023. Joining me today are Bruce Lowthers, Chief Executive Officer; and Alex Gersh, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin, a reminder that this call will contain forward-looking statements and should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements contained in our earnings release and the company's most recent SEC reports. These statements reflect management's current assumptions and expectations and are subject to factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Forward-looking statements during this call speak only as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to update them.

Today's presentation also contains non-GAAP financial measures. You can find additional information about these measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in today's press release and in the appendix of this presentation, which are available on the Investor Relations section of our website.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Thanks, Kirsten, and thank you all for joining us today. Let's jump right in. This marks our fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth, demonstrating progress on our turnaround and strategic initiatives. Our third quarter performance shows growth across our key metrics, including volume, revenue, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EPS, the last 12-month free cash flow, building upon a strong first half of the year.

Third quarter revenue of $396 million increased 8% year-over-year or 5% on a constant currency basis, with trends consistent with what we discussed in the second quarter. We recorded 6% growth in the Merchant Solutions segment, led by double-digit growth from e-commerce. In the Digital Wallets segment, revenue increased 12% on a reported basis and 5% in constant currency, driven by double-digit growth in classic digital wallets, which was partially offset by softer performance in eCash.

Third quarter adjusted EBITDA of $116 million increased 22% year-over-year and 18% constant currency, reflecting 320 basis points of margin improvement. Our net leverage ratio was 5.1x at the end of the quarter, down from 5.8x at the end of last year and well ahead of our original target for '23.

Based on our strong progress and financial results to date, we're pleased to reaffirm our full year guidance for 2023.

We also announced today that our Board has authorized a share repurchase program, giving the company the opportunity to repurchase up to $50 million of common stock. We remain highly focused on investing in our business to support growth while continue to reduce leverage.

I would also like to congratulate our team for receiving several awards during the third quarter. First, Paysafe One Best Digital Wallet at the Digital Bankers Global Payments Innovation Awards. And we're also highly acclaimed for Best Payments Led Financial Inclusion Initiatives. In the iGaming vertical, for the third straight year, we were recognized as the Payment Service Provider of the Year at the prestigious American Gambling Awards from gambling.com Group. We were also recognized on CNBC's list of Top Fintech Companies in the Digital Payments Category. It's always great to see our teams recognize for their dedication to delivering exceptional payment experiences.

Turning to Slide 4. I'll reiterate that we continue to make progress across our strategic focus areas. Starting with sales transformation. In the third quarter, we closed 45 enterprise deals, which we define as agreements with more than $100,000 each in annual contract value. As we've discussed previously, our wins with both new and existing clients were supported by our new vertically focused go-to-market structure, which has improved our ability to sell Paysafe as a strategic payments partner.

We have also been committed to improving the customer experience for both sides of our ecosystem. On the merchant side, one of our focus areas has been to drive greater deal efficiency, including faster onboarding. As just one highlight, when we look at merchants onboarded in September, our average contract to launch time frame was 10 days earlier than what we were delivering in Q2, which reflects 14% improvement over the previous quarter.

Continued focus on process improvement, system consolidation and the creation of targeted customer success team is driving the optimization in this area.

On the consumer side, we continue to see ongoing progress in our funnel optimization and improvements to the gateway experience. For example, our merchant checkout conversion is up more than 6 percentage points year-over-year, reflecting a number of enhancements such as the optimization of merchant integrations, simplified login and registration flows, better analytics and better payment method selection.

On product innovation, in addition to the improvements to product usability, we've talked about leveraging our wallet platform to drive value for our clients and bring together merchants and consumers. In Q4, we are conducting the initial launch of the Paysafe Business Wallet, a digital wallet for U.S. SMB that uses the digital wallet to collect merchant-acquiring settlement.

Over time, the range of money movement capabilities and services will be expanded with a longer-term product vision to combine foundational capabilities, along with addressing the underserved needs of our SMB clients.

Ultimately, we're focused on driving the wallet here in the U.S. in a way that adds value for our merchants while also creating a flywheel effect.

Lastly, we recognize a unique opportunity to enhance and broaden our wallet platform for unbranded solutions. Our foremost objectives are to enrich the capabilities of our wallet platform and facilitate the growth and success of our merchant partners. Our focus is on empowering businesses to create customer experiences aligned with their brand by leveraging the advanced features of our platform. We are well versed in the regulatory landscape and licensing requirements, which our clients and prospective clients appreciate in Paysafe's offering. We are enthusiastic about advancing these initiatives with a number of key deals in the near-term pipeline.

Moving to Slide 5. I'll provide some additional color on the progress that we're seeing across the sales initiative. In the third quarter, we saw balanced deal activity across our target verticals with -- including new merchants, continued strength in cross-selling to our client base, and expanding geographically with our clients. We now have doubled our sales head count in direct sellers versus the same time last year, and we saw 103% net revenue retention through Q3 year-to-date, which has been supported by the work we've done to realign our account management resources.

As another highlight, we're very pleased to announce a new partnership with Fanatics Betting & Gaming, a major brand here in the U.S. Paysafe is providing Fanatics with an all-inclusive payment solution implemented through a single streamlined integration, offering sports bettors an unprecedented range of options for making deposits and receiving payouts.

Moving to Slide 6. We've talked about our unique advantage in the North America iGaming, which is a small but high growth market for Paysafe. We are very strong in card acquiring and gateway, currently live in 30 states with over 50 operators, in addition to our strong position in Canada. So again, through one integration, an online gambler at a merchant -- a gaming merchant can access to any form of payment for money in and money out.

In addition to that, we also have very deep industry relationships and expertise, including high conversion rates at faster state entries, which is also how we attract and retain customers. Now with our new sales organization, we're even in better position to replicate this success across other key verticals.

Moving to Slide 7, for an update on our Classic Digital Wallets, which is, again, consistent with the update we provided in our most recent earnings calls. In the third quarter, we saw constant currency revenue growth of 17% from classic wallets, resulting in 5 quarters of consecutive growth for Digital Wallets. Much of this revenue growth comes from Paysafe's continued work to improve the customer and checkout experience by reducing friction, while we also focus on expanding the use cases of our unique wallet platform.

This stronger engagement has resulted in double-digit growth in both transactions per active user and average revenue per user. Digital Wallets is seeing ongoing stabilization in our active user base with approximately 900,000 3-month actives. And in this quarter, we can report growth of around 3% from the prior year.

Moving to Slide 8. As you've seen in our results, we have improved to 7% revenue growth year-to-date compared to flat performance for the same period last year, as well as a 120 basis point improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin. Here we've broken out the puts and takes across our year-to-date results. We have seen double-digit revenue growth across the Classic Digital Wallet business as well as our e-commerce business, our high priority and high-value focus areas as part of the transformation.

Additionally, our SMB ISO channel continues to perform well, supported by strong demand for our differentiated offering for partners. While we made progress in the areas we set out to turn around and continue to execute that playbook, we still have the opportunity to pursue focused growth in other areas. We've seen softer performance this year in -- from the direct channels and U.S. acquiring, as well as our eCash solutions, which I'll discuss next on Slide 9.

As we focus on 2024, we are addressing the softness on the direct side by, one, enhancing our product offering; two, expanding our acquisition strategy; and three, adding additional sales headcount, including a focus on moving upmarket in the direct business, which is more consistent with our customer profile of our ISO channel.

In eCash, in addition to enhancements to marketing and customer acquisition, we will focus on unifying our eCash technologies and distribution network while continuing to upgrade our customer experience by integrating our wallet features into the platform for a more engaging relationship to support user engagement and the graduation to our branded wallets. We believe both of these businesses should be roughly mid-single-digit growers over the midterm. While we expect our digital wallet and e-comm solutions to continue to see relatively stronger growth.

With that, I'll ask Alex to review the financial results.

A
Alexander Gersh
executive

Thank you, Bruce. Let's move to Slide 11 for a summary of our financial results. Volume was $35.1 billion in the third quarter, an increase of 8% year-over-year, and total revenue of $396.4 million also increased 8% or 5% on a constant currency basis. Growth was led by double-digit volume and revenue growth in e-commerce within the Merchant Solutions segment as well as Classic Digital Wallets, including the benefit of interest revenue on consumer deposits. This was largely in line with our expectations for the quarter, with the exception of FX, mainly the weakening of the euro as the rate trended lower during the quarter. This lowered our revenue growth by roughly $1.7 million or roughly 0.5%.

Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was $116.1 million, an increase of 22% year-over-year or 18% constant currency. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 29.3%, an increase of 320 basis points, primarily driven by lower credit losses and continued operating leverage. Our total SG&A was 30.6% of revenue in the third quarter, down from 36.1% of revenue in the prior-year quarter.

We generated $105 million in free cash flow for the third quarter, reflecting 91% conversion of adjusted EBITDA. On the LTM basis, free cash flow was $362 million, reflecting conversion of 81%. And for the full year, we would expect to be in the range of 65% to 70%.

Adjusted net income for the third quarter increased 21% year-over-year to $35.3 million, and adjusted EPS increased 19% to $0.57 per share as our growth and margin improvements more than offset increase in depreciation and amortization expense, interest expense and taxes.

Let's move to Slide 12 to discuss the segment's results, starting with Merchant Solutions. Third quarter volume in Merchant Solutions was $29.6 billion, an increase of 7% year-over-year, and revenue for the third quarter was $216.8 million, an increase of 6%. Performance was led by e-commerce, which continued to see strong momentum in North American iGaming, while also seeing growth from other verticals including travel and fintech services.

In the SMB market, we saw continued growth in verticals such as eating and drinking places, grocery and petrol, and personal services.

Adjusted EBITDA in Merchant Solutions increased 26% to $57.5 million, an increase of 410 basis points, reflecting operational improvements, including lower credit losses, which more than offset a margin headwind from the channel mix as growth in the SMB segment was again particularly strong in our third-party partner channel.

Turning to Digital Wallets segment on Slide 13. Third quarter volume in Digital Wallets was $5.6 billion, 18% increase year-over-year. Digital Wallets revenue for the third quarter was $182.9 million, an increase of 12% year-over-year and a 5% increase on a constant currency basis, as a modest decline from eCash solutions was more than offset by double-digit growth for our classic digital wallet.

Growth from the Digital Wallet segment was also supported by the new product features launched in Q2, contributing 1.8% to growth, as well as interest revenue on consumer deposits.

Adjusted EBITDA in the Digital Wallet segment was $79.9 million, an increase of 17% year-over-year or 7% constant currency and reflecting a 43.7% margin, up 190 basis points.

Turning to Slide 14 for the summary of debt and leverage. At the end of the third quarter, total debt was $2.5 billion, reflecting debt repayments and repurchases totaling $22 million during the quarter. Year-to-date through September, we have repaid approximately $112 million of our debt as we continue to take advantage of the market opportunity to buy back debt at discount to par. At quarter-end, net debt was $2.3 billion and our leverage ratio was further reduced to 5.1x, compared to 5.8x at the end of last year. I'll reiterate that we remain highly focused on reducing leverage, and we now believe that our net leverage will be approximately 5x by the year-end, well ahead of our target for this year.

As you saw in our earnings release, Paysafe announced today that our Board has authorized a $50 million share repurchase program. With our healthy cash flow generation and consistent progress towards reducing our net leverage ratio over the last several quarters, we believe now is the appropriate time to include share repurchases as part of our capital allocation strategy. We continue to expect the majority of our excess cash flow to be committed to deleveraging, while we also continue to invest in innovation to drive long-term growth.

Moving to the full year outlook on Slide 15. Based on our strategic progress and results to date, we are maintaining our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance for 2023. Just to reiterate, our guidance reflects full year reported revenue to be in the range of $1.595 billion to $1.608 billion, and adjusted EBITDA coming in between $454 million to $462 million, reflecting adjusted EBITDA margin between 28.5% to 29%.

Please note that the euro to USD exchange rate was around 1.1 at the beginning of August and has averaged approximately 1.06 quarter-to-date in Q4. As a reminder, given our geographical mix, every 1% weakening of the euro versus U.S. dollar has an unfavorable impact of approximately $7 million on revenue annualized. So while the business is performing in line with our expectation, if euro remains at the current level or trends lower through the end of the year, this could put us towards the low end of the range.

Now I'll turn the call back to Bruce for closing remarks before we take questions.

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Thank you, Alex. In closing, we're on track to achieve stronger growth and meaningful margin improvement in '23 while reducing leverage, delivering on our strategic initiatives, and preparing for the next phase of our turnaround. Over the last 4 consecutive quarters, we've created momentum in improving year-over-year EBITDA growth starting in Q4 '22 at 2%; Q1 '23, 4%; Q2, 10%; and now Q3, 22% growth. This strong progress has us excited about the opportunities ahead, and we are driving towards our midterm public of high single-digit to low double-digit revenue growth with further margin expansion.

Now let's begin the Q&A session.

K
Kirsten Nielsen
executive

Thank you, Bruce. We'll take a couple of questions from the Say Technologies platform, which allows shareholders to submit and upload questions. After that, we'll turn to questions from our research analyst community. As a reminder, we may pass over any questions that we already addressed on this call or in prior recent quarters. We may also group together questions that share a common theme.

K
Kirsten Nielsen
executive

Okay. Our first question is from Mike who asked, does Paysafe have good Board representation for retail shareholders? The company seems to be doing better, while the stock is trading near lows. Bruce, why don't you take this one?

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Thanks, Kirsten. Sure. Mike, great question and thank you for the question. First, I'll emphasize, I believe that Paysafe has a very strong Board of Directors with diverse perspectives and many decades of experience across finance, capital markets, e-comm, iGaming, legal and compliance, and overall corporate governance. They're highly engaged and focused on doing the right thing for our shareholders. They do not believe that our current share price reflects the quality of our business or the opportunities ahead, which is why they have authorized the buyback program which we announced today.

So this gives us an opportunity to repurchase up to $50 million worth of our stock while we continue to generate healthy cash flow and prioritize reducing debt and investing in an organic growth.

K
Kirsten Nielsen
executive

All right. Thanks, Bruce. We also received a couple of questions regarding the profitability or financial viability of the company as well as the competitive dynamics. Philip asked, how do you set yourself apart from the increasingly competitive field and reverse losses? Bruce, would you like to take this one as well?

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Sure. I'll take the question, and thank you, Philip, for the question. I think it's important to correct any misunderstandings about the company's profitability or solvency. Paysafe has a healthy financial position. Our third quarter performance demonstrated growth across our key metrics, including volume, revenue, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted EPS, and last 12 months free cash flow. When I first joined Paysafe in May of last year, we said that it would be about a year to stabilize and start turning around the performance of our higher-value assets such as e-commerce and Digital Wallets.

As we move into kind of year 2 of my term, we're seeing great results with 7% year-to-date growth, 120 basis point EBITDA margin improvement, and led by double-digit growth in these areas, specifically e-commerce and our classic digital wallet.

While we're certainly not done, as we discussed in our prepared remarks, we're moving to the next phase of the turnaround and positioning the company for stronger growth in the future. When we look at the competitive deals we're winning, what our customers appreciate about Paysafe comes down to 3 key things: customer service, deep expertise across both regulatory and compliance landscape, and breadth of payment solutions, which enables the merchants to reach new customers and markets through a single integration.

We're also very excited about our product innovation initiatives such as our Paysafe Business Wallet, which is launching in Q4, and we believe that will bring additional value to our customers and to Paysafe while expanding the scale and use cases of our wallet platform.

K
Kirsten Nielsen
executive

Okay. Thanks, Bruce. Operator, can you please open the line for the analyst Q&A?

Operator

Certainly. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from David Togut from Evercore ISI. Your line is now live.

D
David Togut
analyst

Looking at Slide 9 on actions taken in 2024 plans, which of these actions do you expect to have the biggest impact on 2024 revenue growth? And just to clarify, the midterm growth target you called out for both businesses in the mid-single digit, does that apply to 2024 specifically?

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

So let me start with Slide 9. So what we tried to highlight here is we really focused here in '23 on the Digital Wallet and e-comm side. Two of our businesses that as it came in were really identified as our high-value businesses really that drove the valuation of the company. When I came in, both of these were struggling, declining businesses. We've been able to focus on those, as we've outlined, and drive them into double-digit growth. So we expect that to continue as we move forward.

We also have some other businesses that we -- as we look at those and try to address those in '24, we've done some things here in the back half of '23 to put us in a position to execute of bringing those businesses, the SMB Direct and eCash businesses, back in line with what we think they should be performing. And so those businesses, as we said in the prepared remarks, are not performing to what we expected, and have similar trend lines where, as we came in, they were kind of underperforming, and now we're focusing on getting those back together.

So we have done a number of the things to start moving the ball on those, and we remain optimistic that those will become mid-single-digit kind of growth profiles for those 2 businesses. So I think as we talked about midterm when we did the Investor Day, we were talking more -- not so much about '24, but further out, and we were looking at '25 being a low double-digit growth profile.

D
David Togut
analyst

Got it. And just as a follow-up, could you talk about expense management initiatives and operating leverage targeted for 2024?

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Yes, I'll let Alex jump in on that.

A
Alexander Gersh
executive

Well, I think when we -- if you saw what we talked about when we talked about the G&A as a percentage of revenue from 36% to 30%, you see that we continue very much to focus on the expense management. I think one of the things that Bruce has highlighted many times before is that, as we bring the desperate businesses, the businesses that operated separately together, that drives a lot of that efficiency, right? So as we create sales organization, product organization, marketing organization, that serve the entire business. So those trends continue and we would expect to continue to see those operating efficiencies.

In terms of the target, when we -- at the end of the year, when we give you the guidance for 2024, we will talk about the targets at that point.

Operator

Next question today is coming from Scott Wurtzel from Wolfe Research. Your line is now live.

S
Scott Wurtzel
analyst

Great. First one, to start off on the wallet user base. It was great to see the transactions per active and the ARPU increasing both sequentially and a year-over-year basis. But just wanted to talk a little bit more about the user base and expectations there. And maybe if you can give some color on sort of how churn versus adds kind of trended in the quarter and how we should be thinking about sort of balancing engagement growth versus active user growth going forward?

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Yes, Scott. Thank you for the question. So look, I think as I said in the earnings call last quarter, we were hoping to see some growth start to emerge in our 3-month actives as we moved into the back half of the year. So as we reported in the prepared remarks, we saw a little bit of that growth start to emerge in Q3 with a 3% growth rate. We expect that to continue. I can tell you that about halfway through Q4, we see continued acceleration with the 3-month actives. So what we've done is we -- as Alex just mentioned, is we've kind of regrouped with our marketing initiatives under Nicole Carroll, our Chief Growth Officer. So we're really kind of focused on consumer acquisition.

We're excited about going forward into '24 because, not only did we consolidate our marketing efforts, we do have new wallets coming to market, both with our Business Wallet, and we have some deals in our pipeline that we'll be rolling out in '24 that are around our non-branded, so white label wallets, that will be coming. So we can see a clear path to 3-month actives continuing to expand as we move into '24.

S
Scott Wurtzel
analyst

Got it. That's helpful. And then just as a follow-up on the eCash side of things and your plans there for 2024. As I think about eCash and going back to sort of the last couple of years, kind of even as maybe the wallet side was declining if we go back to 18, 24 months, eCash was still more of a steady grower. So just wondering kind of if we do like a look back, look forward, what kind of caused the eCash business to decelerate sort of to this 1% growth rate? And maybe just expand a little bit more on your initiatives there to reaccelerate the growth in that business.

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Yes. So just to kind of level set, when you had eCash as a business last year in '22, it had declined 3% from '21. '21, if you look back, eCash is, in essence, a prepaid business, which usually does very well in recessionary time frames or time frames such as COVID as you were hitting '20 and '21. So we had a significant amount of growth in 2021. We knew that, that was, back then, we knew that, that kind of growth profile was not a sustainable growth profile. So you saw it pull back in '22. And you're seeing it improve from kind of a minus 3% to a 1% year-to-date in '23.

So while we're moving it back in the right direction, those businesses typically, in my experience at least, have really kind of always gravitated around mid-single-digit growth profiles.

Operator

Your next question is coming from Jamie Friedman from Susquehanna. Your line is now live.

J
James Friedman
analyst

Nice improvement here. So I wanted to ask first about your callout, Bruce, about the acceleration in boarding new merchants. I'm just trying to find the page.

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Yes. I think it was Page 9.

J
James Friedman
analyst

I got it. No, it's Page 4. So yes, so when you're saying that the Merchant, you expedited 10 days, and that's versus May '23, and that's 14%. I'm going to say I never heard that metric before. It sounds important. I'm just wondering operationally how it is that you've been able to deliver that and what it may mean in terms of your financial results?

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Yes, Jamie, great question. So one of the things that we've talked a lot about this year is around operational excellence. And as Alex mentioned a little bit earlier, when you looked at our company going back a year, what we had was a series of organizations kind of operating independently. Those things created some inefficiency within our organization.

And what we've really tried to do here is get after the business processes and the technology stacks that allow us to accelerate our revenue streams. And so when we look at this 10-day example, it's just another example of how we're focusing on improving the business processes that we have to accelerate our time to revenue. I think we talked about in the earnings -- sorry, in the Analyst Day that we did, we talked about time to market for our enterprise deals being close to 9 months and trying to drive that down from 270 days down to 58 days just in a couple of months.

So a lot of positive movement on process review and kind of what we're doing.

J
James Friedman
analyst

Okay. Great. And then, Bruce, if I could follow up with just a higher-level question, which we get. How would you compare the competitive position of Merchant Solutions versus Digital Wallets? I know it's a very hard thing to answer because the denominator, the market environment for both is different. But it looks like Merchant is doing about, if not better than the market. Wallet, I know it's a very competitive world. But just at a high level, how would you compare the positioning of both those big products for you?

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Yes. Look, I think in the Merchant side, we've got a very competitive product. We see strong growth in our SMB space. Certainly, we resell some other products like Clover. We've had strong 20% growth in sales of Clover. Our e-comm component of the Merchant is also very competitive in the verticals that we're in. So what we're really trying to do is, on the spaces that we play in, we're not trying to go upstream and go after e-comm for Apple or Amazon. We're trying to stay in the verticals that we play in and that we have a tremendous amount of domain expertise. And so that's really worked for us and it's allowed us to really reaccelerate the growth engine on the Merchant acquiring.

I think when you look on the Wallet side, we feel very good about what we do with the Wallet. Again, I think the platform as itself, as we start moving into the non-branded or white label wallet component of the Wallet platform, we feel like there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. Because of the regulatory compliance things, the fraud management that we're exceptional at, we really feel like we compete very well.

Again, in our Wallet space, we're trying to really focus on owning a couple of verticals that we play exceptionally well, in the gaming space, the gambling space. What we're not trying to become is just a horizontal wallet that competes necessarily with Apple or some of the other more horizontal brands.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from Tim Chiodo from UBS.

T
Timothy Chiodo
analyst

Great. I wanted to ask about the competitive environment in the North American iGaming e-commerce or online market. Braintree, clearly a large competitor in overall e-commerce, merchant acquiring. And you may had made some public comments in the past about seeing them in that space. Are you running into them much? How much of a competitor are they to your online processing or merchant acquiring capabilities in that space?

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Sure. So look, this is a highly competitive space. We have lots of competitors in North America, Braintree being one of them. We do run into them, and probably most deals that we compete in. But we have a very strong value proposition. We continue to win in this space. Our space is, for us, is led by Zak Cutler and his team. They're doing an exceptional job, highlighting what the value proposition for us is, and they've been very successful, as you can see.

So it's early days but we remain very optimistic about our opportunities within iGaming, not just in North America, but globally.

T
Timothy Chiodo
analyst

Right. And part of your approach there is, right, you have the wallets and the processing. Would you say that, that is the same for them? In other words, do you see the PayPal Wallet or button, if you will, being cross-sold in the same way that you might cross-sell the processing capabilities and your Digital Wallets? In other words, do you see the button as for PayPal as much in the online gambling space?

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

We do. So I would say when you look at the competitors in our stack, they are probably the most similar to us in value proposition. I think what distinguishes us versus them is, when you really think about our VIP heritage with the Wallet, they just simply don't do that. And so we really do stand out, again, years of experience, years of regulatory experience and fraud experience. So we like our chances competing.

T
Timothy Chiodo
analyst

Perfect. If you don't mind, if I can just -- it's a very quick numbers one. Just on the SMB Direct portion of the business that you talked about focusing on more in 2024. Can you just give us the most recent contribution to that segment's revenue from SMB Direct? How big is that portion that you're going to focus on?

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Kirsten, do you have that breaking?

K
Kirsten Nielsen
executive

Sure. Well, for the total company, it's a little north of 20%, call it, 23%. So you can do the math on what that is for Merchant Solutions. I mean, that's going to give or take a little bit, depending on the mix each quarter. But I would assume a little north of 20%, of the whole company.

T
Timothy Chiodo
analyst

North of 20% for the whole company. Okay. So meaningfully higher for the Merchant segment. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is from Aditya Buddhavarapu from Bank of America.

A
Aditya Buddhavarapu
analyst

A few from my side. Can you just maybe give us a quick update on what you've seen so far in Q4? I think you touched upon that a bit on the -- as you roll it, sort of user growth, but much more broadly across the business, what you've seen so far? Any initial thoughts on '24? I know you said you have a few things to prioritize. But yes, any initial thoughts on that? That's the first question.

A
Alexander Gersh
executive

I think, in terms of what we've seen so far, we keep our guidance unchanged, right, for the year. And we've highlighted the FX issue, right, which would take us to the bottom end of the guidance. So that's what we see. We see the business continue to perform to our expectations. But we need to keep -- be mindful of FX.

And on 2024, at the end of the year, when we give you the results for 2023, we will talk about '24 and give guidance. At this point, we don't really have anything else to say at '24.

A
Aditya Buddhavarapu
analyst

Understood. That's clear. And then just going back to iGaming. So your volumes grew 50%. I'm sure some of that is driven by your initiatives. But just trying to understand -- is that coming through -- how much of that is coming through the market versus maybe some -- maybe you're gaining share from some of the other players there?

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Well, look, yes, I mean, absolutely, we're live in 30 states, up a fair amount from last year. But I would again say, we -- we're winning in this market where we're driving great deals. Obviously, adding Fanatics to the portfolio, this quarter has been a great win for us. I think the team continues to execute well. But yes, there's some great tailwinds in this space as well. It's -- certainly in North America.

I would, again, just call out, it is -- it's a small part of our business, but it's growing and growing rapidly. E-comm overall is growing rapidly. We feel very good about our e-comm space.

A
Aditya Buddhavarapu
analyst

Great. Understood. And then just going back to the midterm guidance. So the bridge to that sort of low double-digit growth. Is that something you think you can do even if, let's say, eCash or the direct sales in SMB, and then Merchant SMB doesn't really pick up? Or do you think those need to start accelerating as well for you to get to that?

A
Alexander Gersh
executive

At all moved away from the midterm guidance that we talked about, high single digit, low double digits, we still believe that to be the case. There are lots of irons in the fire. Some things will work better, some things will not work better. But overall, we think that there is -- this is still where we are targeting to be.

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Yes, I'll just add, I have complete confidence we will be able to get the SMB Direct business and eCash business in the right growth profile.

Operator

We've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any further or closing comments.

B
Bruce Lowthers
executive

Yes. Look, I just want to thank everyone for joining us today. I want to thank Kirsten and the team here for all your help going this together yet again, and really appreciate all the efforts that has gone into Q3, and look forward to talking to everybody at the end of the year and the exciting times ahead for '24. Thank you very much.

A
Alexander Gersh
executive

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.

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