UnitedHealth Group has agreed to purchase healthcare payments company Equian in a deal worth around $3.2bn, Wall Street Journal reported.

The seller is private equity firm New Mountain Capital.

Both UnitedHealth and Equian refused to comment on the matter.

The divestiture is said to have been carried out following an auction process that lingered for months.

Equian, which merged with Trover Solutions, was snapped up by New Mountain Capital in 2015.

The firm is headquartered in Indiana. Furthermore, Equian will be integrated into UnitedHealth’s Optum unit.

The current year has seen several consolidation activities in the payments space.

The new deal continues the trend.

Among major payment deals this year include the acquisition of TSYS by Global Payments for $21.5bn and Visa’s purchase of Earthport.

In March, FIS snapped up Worldpay in a $43bn deal.

Earlier this year, Fiserv announced plans to buy payment processor First Data for $22bn.

Notably, blockchain payments firm Ripple recently agreed to invest $50m in money transfer firm MoneyGram.

Apart from these high-profile deals, 2019 also reported some more merger and acquisition activities.

A couple of days ago, Celero Commerce acquired payment processing services providers Elmhurst Financial Services and Tandem Innovative Payment Solutions.

In addition, Allied Wallet bought Epayment.