Newcastle-based software giant Sage Group, the UK’s largest tech company, said it reached an agreement to sell its North American Payments business Sage Payment Solutions (SPS) to Chicago-based private equity firm GTCR for about $260 million.

SPS’s reported revenue for the year ended September 30, 2016 was £130 million.

Sage CEO Stephen Kelly said: “We recently outlined our updated payments and banking strategy which included exiting areas of the payments market where the strategic fit is not as strong as the rest of the business, whilst continuing to build on our growing network of partnerships within the payments and banking sector.

“This strategy will allow us to enhance and extend our payments capabilities to all our major geographies, strengthening our golden triangle of accounting, people & payroll and payments & banking.”