KORT Payments, a Toronto payments company, said on October 19, 2026 that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire all of AptPay Inc., a Toronto company that handles real-time payments and payment orchestration for businesses in Canada and the United States.
The companies did not disclose the price or any other financial terms. The deal has not yet closed. KORT said it expects to complete the purchase in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions.
Once the deal closes, AptPay will become a division of KORT and keep the AptPay brand. Shams Syed, AptPay's chief executive, will continue to run the business unit. KORT said AptPay's customers and partners would keep being supported without interruption.
What AptPay built
AptPay was founded in 2019 and is based in Toronto. It describes itself as a payments technology company focused on account-to-account payments, combining payment processing and compliance in a single platform.
Its main product is a single integration that lets a business send and receive money over several payment rails. According to the release, these include Interac e-Transfer and EFT in Canada; ACH, RTP and FedNow in the United States; the card networks' push-payment services, Visa Original Credit Transaction (OCT) and Mastercard Send; and cross-border transfers. The platform supports real-time collections and disbursements, and it includes know-your-customer checks, anti-money-laundering controls and sanctions screening.
KORT said AptPay works with merchants and platforms in both countries and has a strong presence in online gaming and gambling, digital assets and financial services. These are sectors where businesses often need to pay out funds to users quickly and where compliance checks are heavy.
“AptPay's real-time payout and orchestration capabilities are highly complementary to our platform”
Why KORT is buying
KORT describes itself as an omnichannel payments provider that offers compliance, risk management and payment processing on one platform. Until now its business has centred on card acceptance. The company said AptPay adds account-to-account payments and disbursements to its range, and that the purchase supports its growth plan by broadening its products and speeding up its expansion in the United States.
Danny Chazonoff, KORT's president and chief operating officer, said in the release that AptPay's real-time payout and orchestration capabilities are "highly complementary to our platform." He added that the acquisition "strengthens our position in the payments ecosystem."
Syed said that joining KORT would strengthen AptPay's business by bringing together two teams with a shared vision.
A string of deals at KORT
AptPay is the latest in a series of transactions by KORT. In September 2024 the company announced that it had bought Barnet Technologies, a Canadian point-of-sale software maker that serves regulated businesses such as licensed liquor stores. Joel Leonoff was named as KORT's chairman and chief executive at the time.
In February 2025, KORT agreed to buy the direct marketing payment processing business of Paysafe Direct LLC, a U.S. company. That deal included reseller and merchant contracts, technology and key staff, and Leonoff called it a "quantum leap for the company." Hiep Tran, KORT's chief strategy officer and a board member, had founded and run the Paysafe Direct business before the sale, according to CleanLink.
KORT has also been selling assets. In the week before the AptPay announcement, it completed the sale of substantially all operating assets of its Merrco business to PayFacto Payments. It said at the time that it would concentrate on direct marketing, e-commerce, embedded payments for software vendors and expansion in the United States, according to a Fathom4sight newsletter.
What is not known
Outside coverage of the deal has been limited. Finovate listed it in its weekly fintech news roundup on October 19, and the release was reposted on other sites, but no outlet reported details beyond what the companies said.
The sources we reviewed did not give AptPay's funding history, its investors, its headcount or its revenue. KORT did not say how it will pay for the company, whether in cash, shares or a mix. Those details may emerge when the deal closes.
The agreement also remains conditional. KORT described the closing conditions only as customary and did not list them, so it is not clear what approvals, if any, are still needed before AptPay formally becomes part of the company.
