FIS’s recent acquisition of Dragonfly Financial Technologies brings open-banking concepts traditionally focused on retail customers into the complex realm of corporate treasury operations.
The deal, finalized in November 2024, represents a bet that corporate clients are ready for the same digital transformation that has reshaped consumer-banking experiences in recent years.
Financial technology giant FIS completed its purchase of Dragonfly rom private equity firm One Equity Partners, which had previously carved the business out of ACI Worldwide in September 2022. While financial terms weren’t disclosed, the acquisition aligns with FIS’s broader strategy of expanding its digital banking capabilities beyond retail into corporate and commercial banking sectors.
“Our speed to market by acquiring Dragonfly will make us much faster, especially for tier-2 and tier-3 banks,” said Andrew Murray, head of international banking and payments for Singapore at FIS. He told DigFin, “The problem has always been how to scale a business for these smaller banks, and how to support them. Dragonfly lets us do so.”
The deal represents part of a broader acquisition strategy by FIS. During a February 2025 earnings call, CEO Stephanie Ferris noted that the company had made five acquisitions over the past year, including both Dragonfly and UK-based supply chain finance software company Demica.
“We are also expanding our reach with strategic M&A,” Ferris told analysts. These acquisitions are helping FIS expand into areas where it sees rising demand from banking and capital markets customers, particularly in delivering more services to chief financial officers and their staff.
Mind the gap
Dragonfly’s digital business banking platform was designed specifically to meet the demanding standards of financial institutions supporting complex business cash management needs. Its offerings already serve over 1.4 million businesses and their banks, including four of the top 10 largest US banks, with additional presence in Asia Pacific markets including Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand.
Johan Roets, who served as CEO of Dragonfly before the acquisition, explained the company’s market position to DigFin: “Dragonfly’s market is traditionally in the US, where we serve not the top 10 banks but the next 100 banks, regional banks for example, in the largest cities that find themselves bumping up against the top 10.”
These mid-sized financial institutions often struggle to match the technology investments of banking giants, particularly when competing for corporate-treasury relationships that can generate significant fee income and deposits.
“We become the shared weapon, so smaller banks can win corporate RFPs, can meet the functionality, configuration, manage entitlements and reporting, do all the transactions,” Roets said.
Corporate BaaS
The acquisition comes as global open-banking payment transactions are projected to surge from $57 billion in 2023 to $330 billion by 2027, according to Citibank. However, regulatory frameworks have primarily focused on retail aspects of open banking and ‘Banking as a Service’ fintech offerings, with less guidance around corporate account holders.
“Open banking is a collaboration. It’s mainly about data sharing,” Murray explained. “It’s been developed initially for retail banking, and we are bringing this to corporates. They can control their own data, use secure APIs; and banks can support their clients better.”
For corporate users, this shift represents a significant evolution in how they interact with financial institutions. Large corporations receive bespoke banking services tailored to their needs, but this approach hasn’t scaled well to smaller businesses.
“Traditionally, corporates didn’t need open banking because they’re big clients and the banks will do anything to tailor services for them,” Roets noted. “Dragonfly systematizes this. Now takes corporate standard service to SMEs and even retail banks.”
ERP integration
Perhaps the most transformative aspect of the FIS-Dragonfly combination is its focus on connecting banking services directly with the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems that corporations use to manage their finances.
“FIS gives Dragonfly scale of distribution, integration into corporate ERP software,” Roets explained. “Our data of core banking and payments can be integrated into an ERP via API.” Such integrations will be an important focus of the business for the next three years, he said.
This integration aims to eliminate what Roets calls “two-screen swivels,” where treasury staff must constantly switch between banking portals and their own internal systems. By enabling seamless data flow between ERPs and banking services, companies can streamline approval workflows and automate reconciliation processes.
The next step, already in progress, moves this entire process into the ERP itself, eliminating the need to use separate banking portals altogether.
From retail to corporate
While the concepts of open banking have proven successful in retail settings, corporate applications bring unique challenges. According to a May 2025 Citi report, the combination of APIs, open banking, and real-time payments could transform corporate treasury operations into “a fully integrated, secure, real-time operational treasury function” that might eventually make “end-of-day cash management and cutoff times obsolete”.
However, companies looking to implement open-banking solutions may need broader technology updates to support real-time treasury. “If their ERP or payment systems are still in batch mode, running every 15-20 minutes or every hour, there is a mismatch,” the Citi report notes.
Roets also expressed some skepticism about the broader Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) trend that has accompanied open banking innovation.
“Anybody can stand up code, use a banking license, and reach customers. At some point, though, you need to install major controls and the oversight of a bank. And as BaaS players grow, they attract the attention of regulators, who will want to see rigor around KYC and AML.”
Global expansion
The acquisition also positions FIS to expand Dragonfly’s presence beyond its traditional North American base. Murray indicated that FIS plans to introduce Dragonfly’s capabilities to more clients in Asia, where they see similar market dynamics emerging.
“We will introduce Dragonfly to our Asia clients,” Murray said. “The trends they are seeing in the US will also happen in Asia Pacific. Aspirational banks will chase corporate clients as those expand and grow, and these banks will bump against the biggest competitors and will need an effective solution.”
Through this strategic acquisition, FIS is positioning itself at the center of an evolving corporate banking ecosystem, combining Dragonfly’s expertise with its own scale and resources. The goal is to enable banks of all sizes to offer their corporate clients the digital experiences they increasingly expect.
“If a bank provides a good process workflow, corporates are more likely to stay in that relationship for transactions,” Roets noted. “And it also benefits the ERP providers.”
