Archie
Hilco Streambank (“Hilco”) is seeking offers to acquire the intellectual property assets of Eliga Services Limited (In Administration) (“Archie” or the “Company”) on behalf of the Joint Administrators of the Company, Carl Faulds and Stewart Goldsmith of Leonard Curtis Business Solutions Group.
Small-business owners are regularly tasked with wearing several hats, acting as visionaries, accountants, marketers and more, leading to an incredible amount of work that needs to be streamlined. Open banking can help optimise operations by facilitating access to banking information, allowing entrepreneurs to leverage third-party software that can automate various tasks, and freeing business owners’ time to focus on growing their businesses. The problem is that many people are still unsure about what open banking actually is and what it can achieve. Founded in 2016, Archie set out to offer a more inherently human experience in a jargon-heavy market, helping business owners and their customers to realise the full benefits of open banking and data sharing with its next-generation payments and data platform (the “Platform”).
The product of c. £2m in investment, the Platform offers a user-friendly solution that enables its partners, including SMEs and larger corporations, to create consent-driven payment and data experiences. Partners can set up these journeys in minutes without needing any coding and personalised to their branding.
Small business owners can now add faster and more cost-effective open banking payments to their existing payment methods using ‘pay by link’ and QR codes, whilst Archie’s end-to-end solution identifies the benefits of open banking data to their specific business, including real-time balances and KYC services, but also transactional categorisation and merchant identification data that enables businesses to offer products and services that help customers manage their money better.
At the Company’s Administration, Archie was working with an enviable client roster across a range of industries and sectors, illustrating the wide applications of the technology. The Company employed c. 20 employees before Administration.
This sale offers an opportunistic buyer the unique chance to acquire an elegantly designed and functioning open-banking Platform and accompanying intellectual property portfolio to reignite the business and exploit the demand for a user-friendly open-banking solution.
The Archie Brand
The Archie brand is well-known and highly regarded in the FinTech space.
The brand has been cultivated around Archie’s vision of making open banking accessible to all and educating consumers about the possibilities prompted by open banking and data sharing.
The brand has been bolstered by association and relationship with its key clients, many of whom are significant players in their respective fields.
Various media outlets and key industry sources, including FinTech Futures, Disruption Banking, IBS Intelligence and FinTech Finance News, have also publicised the brand.
Trade Marks
The Company holds several UK registered trade marks in relation to the “Archie” brand name, including protection for the word marks “Hi Archie” and “Meet Archie”.
The Company is likely to possess rights in the unregistered trade marks protecting the “Archie” logo.
Domain Name
The Company holds the primary hi-archie.co domain name, which showcases and hosts the Company’s Platform technology.
The Platform
Developed in-house, the Company’s next-generation payments and data Platform, coined Archie, is available to acquire, including the copyright in sleek website content and the supporting source code.
Further technical documentation is available via a virtual data room.
Social Media Accounts
Rights in the social media accounts are also available to acquire across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Offers are due Wednesday 12 July at 4pm BST.
All expressions of interest and bids are to be directed to Hilco in writing. A Bid Submission Form is available on request. Please contact Hilco to gain access to a virtual data room of further information on signing a confidentiality agreement.
The Joint Administrators act as agents of the Company and without personal liability.
The bidder acknowledges that Hilco acts as an agent for the Joint Administrators who offer for sale only what right, title and interest (if any) the Company possesses in the assets. Such sale will be without any warranties, expressed or implied. The information provided has not been verified by Hilco or the Joint Administrators and bidders are deemed to have carried out their own due diligence.
VAT, if applicable, at 20% will be added to the price. A non-refundable deposit of 20% will be payable by the buyer within 48 hours of bid acceptance. A buyer’s premium of 10% of the sale price is payable by the winning bidder. Legal completion to occur within 5 business days of bid acceptance. Hilco’s full Terms and Conditions apply.
