PCI Pal offers one of the clearest listed-market references for understanding how public investors value a specialist provider of secure payments for business communications.
If Eckoh showed what a financial buyer may pay for a mature specialist asset, PCI Pal helps explain how the public market is currently valuing a comparable business. In its results for the year ended 30 June 2025, PCI Pal reported £22.48 million in revenue, with 91% of that revenue generated from recurring contracts.
A recognizable recurring software profile
PCI Pal’s operating profile is clearly that of a recurring B2B software business. The company reported ARR of £19.26 million, CARR of £22.20 million, Adjusted EBITDA of £2.32 million, 95% GRR, 104% NRR, and a customer base of more than 700 clients across Europe, North America, and ANZ. It also stated that 100% of its secure payments revenue comes from its multitenant cloud platform.
Its first-half FY26 update reinforced that same thesis. As of 31 December 2025, PCI Pal reported ARR of £20.3 million, CARR of £24.0 million, GRR of 95%, NRR of 105%, and 21% year-on-year ARR growth.
What the public market is saying
Despite that operating profile, the market valuation remained relatively modest. London Stock Exchange data in March 2026 showed PCI Pal at approximately £36.59 million in market capitalization, while a market document dated 27 March 2026 placed market value at roughly £37 million.
Compared with PCI Pal’s FY25 figures, that suggests a public market valuation of around 1.63x revenue and approximately 1.9x ARR. These two metrics are arithmetic inferences based on public data, not company-published valuation multiples.
The gap between public and private value
That becomes especially interesting when compared with Eckoh. Bridgepoint’s agreed acquisition valued Eckoh at approximately 4.35x revenue, 5.25x ARR, and 15.9x adjusted EBITDA based on FY24 figures. The comparison is not perfectly like-for-like, since one case uses market capitalization and the other uses enterprise value, and the companies are different and observed at different points in time. Even so, the gap is large enough to suggest that public markets and private buyers are not assigning the same strategic value to this niche.
Funding growth
Another relevant point is that PCI Pal has been able to attract market support for growth. In March 2024, it announced an oversubscribed placing that raised approximately £3.5 million gross, through the issue of 6,250,000 shares at 56 pence per share.
That supports an important conclusion: even when public market multiples are cautious, investor appetite can still exist for specialist platforms that demonstrate growth, retention, recurrence, and credible technology positioning. That conclusion is an inference supported by the placing and PCI Pal’s reported operating metrics.
Conclusion
PCI Pal highlights a central feature of the sector: a specialist provider of secure payments for voice and contact center environments can exhibit strong SaaS-like metrics while still trading at relatively restrained public market multiples. That is precisely why such assets may become especially attractive from a strategic or private equity perspective, where industrial value and scarcity often matter more than in listed markets.
The gap between public valuation and private strategic value deserves attention.
In specialist niches such as secure IVR payments, listed markets do not always capture the full industrial value of a well-positioned platform.