The Green Sheet Online Edition
November 9, 2026 • 26:11:01
Who is buying merchant portfolios, and what are they paying for?
Last month I wrote about what sets the multiple on a residual book. This month I want to answer the question I get on almost every first call, which is simpler and harder at the same time: who is actually buying these books right now, and what are they paying for?
Not what they say they are paying for. What the money shows up for. I have had a buyer or a seller on the phone most days this year, and the buyer market in 2026 has sorted itself into five types. Knowing which one you are talking to tells you more about your number than any rule of thumb.
Five buyers, five sets of priorities
The first type is the consolidating ISO with committed capital. These are operators, usually with a family office or a credit fund behind them, who have raised money specifically to buy residual streams and bolt them onto a platform they already run. They are the most active buyers I see and the most predictable.
They want direct-boarded books on the big processors, 12 months of merchant-level statements before they talk price, and a seller who will stay reachable for a transition. They pay for cleanliness. A book that checks those boxes gets a real number from them inside two weeks, and the number sits in the upper half of the range. A book that does not get a polite pass, because they have six others in the queue. The second type is the residual-financing buyer. This is the group that buys small books, call it under $20,000 a month in net residuals, quickly and for cash. They are not building a platform; they are buying an annuity and pricing it on attrition and cost of money.
They move fast, they do not care much about the story, and they pay at the lower end of the range because they are taking the runoff risk alone. If your book is small and you want out this quarter, this buyer is your friend. If your book is large, do not let this buyer anchor your expectations, because the number they quote is for a different asset than the one you own.
The third type is the strategic acquirer: a processor, a payment facilitator or a software company that has decided it wants merchants, not just residuals. They pay for distribution. The merchants, the referral relationships, the agents who keep boarding, the vertical the book is concentrated in.
They are the buyers who will pay above the range, sometimes well above it, but only when the book brings something they cannot build. A seven-figure book with no agents and no go-forward story means nothing to them. A smaller book with a sales channel in a vertical they want can get a number that makes the residual buyer's math look silly.
The fourth type is the private-equity-backed platform buying ISOs, not books. These are the buyers behind most of the larger transactions I have worked on in the last eighteen months. They are buying a business: people, software integrations, recurring revenue, a management team that stays.
They price on EBITDA, not on a multiple of monthly residuals, which is why an ISO with integrations and a team trades at a very different number than the same residual stream sold as a book. If you own an ISO and someone quotes you a residual multiple, you are being priced as a book, and you are leaving money on the table.
The fifth type is the first-time buyer. An agent who did well, a merchant-services owner who wants to grow by acquisition, an investor who read that residuals are a great business. They tend to quote the highest multiple on the first call and renegotiate once they see the statements, because they priced the headline and not the trend.
I do not say that to dismiss them; some of the best deals I have closed were to buyers doing their first one. But a seller should treat their first number as a conversation starter, and should ask early where the money comes from. If the answer is a lender they have not spoken to yet, the number is not real until it is.
What the numbers reflect
So what are they paying? In 2026, clean books are trading between roughly 28 and 55 times monthly net residual, and the spread between the bottom and the top of that range is the whole story. The bottom belongs to small, stacked, shrinking books sold to residual-financing buyers for cash. The top belongs to direct-boarded, diversified books with low attrition and a go-forward channel, sold to consolidators or strategics who want what comes with the residual.
Most of what crosses my desk lands somewhere in the middle, and almost every seller who is disappointed with a number is comparing a middle-of-the-range book to a top-of-the-range price.
A few shapes from this year, with the names left out. A direct-boarded book with a few hundred merchants, four years of flat-to-down revenue and a founder who wanted to stay: priced by a consolidator at the lower middle of the range, because the trend was the trend, and the founder staying was the only reason it was not lower.
A small book under ten thousand dollars a month, sold to a residual-financing buyer in a matter of weeks, at the bottom of the range, for cash, and the seller was happy because speed was the point.
A larger portfolio on a single processor, with a gateway that will need migrating, where the honest indicative number landed well below the seller's opening expectation, and the reason was not the merchants. It was the migration risk and the absence of an attrition guarantee. Buyers price what can go wrong after closing, and they price it first.
Find the fit before discussing price
Three things to take from this. First, identify the buyer type before you discuss a number, because the five types are not paying for the same thing, and a multiple from one means nothing to another.
Second, a book with a future sells to the buyers who pay the most, and a book with only a past sells to the buyers who pay the least, and the difference is usually a year of work on agents, integrations and attrition that the seller could have done. Third, ask where the money comes from. Committed capital pays what it quotes. Capital that still has to be raised quotes what it hopes.
Next month: verticalization, and why a book concentrated in one industry on purpose can be worth more than a book concentrated by accident. 
Lane Gordon is CEO of 733Park, a boutique M&A advisory firm focused on payments, fintech and SaaS, with 25 years in payments M&A, more than $10 billion in transaction volume and 200 or more closed transactions. He runs every engagement personally, from pitch to close. Reach him at lane@733park.com.
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