Six months after raising $250 million, Papaya Global is making a key acquisition to expand its cloud-based HR and payroll platform globally on the heels of major surge in remote working. The Israeli startup is acquiring Azimo -- the London-based money transfer business that Facebook once tried to buy to spearhead its own remittance efforts -- a deal that will see Papaya Global moving into more markets, and launching more services such as instant payroll payments.

Terms of the acquisition are not officially being disclosed, but a source close to companies tells me that the deal was between $150 million and $200 million, a figure others appear to have also reported. Papaya is acquiring the full business upon the deal closing, including all of Azimo's employees, the company said.

For some context, Papaya Global -- backed by companies like Insight Partners and Tiger Global -- was valued at $3.7 billion in its last funding round in September 2021, after growing revenues 300% each year for the last three years.

Azimo, meanwhile, was backed by investors including Rakuten and Greycroft and competes with the likes of Wise (FKA TransferWise). Both companies were among a shortlist that Facebook tapped several years ago when it first started to weigh up a move into money transfer services (a service it now provides).

The deal will help Papaya Global on two levels.

First, it will help it expand the company expand its geographic footprint: Azimo currently has payment licenses in the U.K., the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong, and it operates a payment network in more than 160 countries, while Papaya Global (not to be confused with the other fintech called Papaya) operated services in 140 countries prior to this deal.

Second, it will help Papaya Global expand the services it provides. These include not just faster (instant) payment of payroll, but potentially a much wider selection of remittance services for people who are working in one country but have family or others they want to pay in another. In the past those individuals might have used other services like Wise (or indeed Azimo) to handle those payments; now Papaya Global can keep them on their own network (and thus capture the commissions and foreign exchange fees) around those transactions.