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Investment Banker·Payments

Kartik Sudeep

Managing Director, FinTech Payments Coverage at Houlihan Lokey

New York, NY, United States

KS
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Why they matter

He leads payments coverage at Houlihan Lokey's FinTech Group, giving him a live read on sponsor appetite and deal structuring across merchant acquiring M&A.

Background

Kartik Sudeep is a Managing Director in Houlihan Lokey's FinTech Group, where he leads coverage of the payments sector. He joined Houlihan Lokey in November 2023 from Moelis & Company, where he was promoted to Managing Director in February 2023 as senior coverage officer for FinTech and payments; earlier in his career he helped build Jefferies' FinTech investment banking practice and worked on Duff & Phelps' TMT team, after nearly a decade as a software engineer at IBM. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering (BITS Pilani; Duke) and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Notable deals

  • 2023
    Recruited by Houlihan Lokey as Managing Director to lead payments sector coverage within its FinTech Group
  • 2024
    Quoted in Payments Dive on rising M&A appetite as payments and software companies combine to build integrated tech stacks
  • 2024
    Guest on Mayer Brown's 'Financial Services Focus' podcast discussing recent developments and deal drivers in the payments industry

Call-prep brief

Background

  • MD, FinTech Group at Houlihan Lokey (NY), leading payments sector coverage since Nov 2023.
  • Prior: MD at Moelis & Company (promoted Feb 2023) covering FinTech/payments M&A; SVP at Jefferies, where he helped build the FinTech banking practice; VP at Duff & Phelps (TMT); ~10 years as a software engineer at IBM before pivoting to banking.
  • Engineering-heavy background (BITS Pilani, Duke MS in EE) plus an MBA (UT Austin, Kozmetsky Scholar) — unusually technical for a coverage banker.

Current focus

  • Sellside/buyside M&A and financing across payments, merchant acquiring, and financial software.
  • Publicly vocal (Payments Dive, Mayer Brown podcast, HL's Payments Market Update series) about consolidation: software players acquiring payments capability to shift from pure subscription to subscription-plus-transaction revenue.

What he cares about

  • Cross-border payment rails and regulatory complexity of international expansion.
  • Timing risk — he's flagged that companies slow to build/acquire payments capability risk "missing the boat."
  • Sponsor financing conditions; he's noted a "healthier" dealmaking environment as of late 2024.

Sensitivities

  • Moved banks twice in under a year (Moelis promotion Feb 2023 → HL hire Nov 2023) — probe motivations tactfully, not confrontationally.
  • As a sitting banker, he cannot discuss active mandates or non-public client information.

Questions to ask

  1. Which merchant acquiring subsegments (ISO consolidation, cross-border rails, vertical SaaS+payments) is he seeing the most sponsor-driven deal flow in right now?
  2. What valuation gaps or financing conditions are currently killing or delaying payments deals he's tracking?
  3. How is he advising clients on build-vs-buy for payments capability given the regulatory complexity he's flagged publicly?

Outreach draft

Subject
Quick call on merchant acquiring deal trends?
Hi Kartik, I came across your comments in Payments Dive and the Mayer Brown podcast on M&A momentum in payments — your read on software companies acquiring payments capability to diversify revenue really resonated. I'm part of a deal team evaluating opportunities in merchant acquiring and would value your perspective on where you're seeing the most sponsor interest and how financing conditions are shaping deal structures right now. Would you have 20 minutes in the next couple of weeks for a call? Happy to work around your schedule. Best, [Placeholder Name]

Linked companies

Sources