Sage Pay, the accounting and financial software used by thousands of small business across the country has been sold to a US based payments firm for £232million.

An announcement made this morning by Sage Group PLC said the company had entered into an agreement for the sale of Sage Pay to Elavon, a subsidiary of US firm Bancorp.

The announcement said that there will be no material change to the services offered by Sage software.

It said: "Sage Pay is a leading provider of payment gateway services in the United Kingdom and Ireland and the divested business will remain an important payments partner for Sage after completion.

"For the year ended 30 September 2018 Sage Pay had revenue of £41m and operating profit of £15m.

"The total sale consideration is approximately £232m, payable in cash on completion (subject to a customary debt and working capital adjustment).

"Sage expects to report a statutory profit on disposal of approximately £180m on completion.

Completion of the transaction is subject to Elavon obtaining regulatory approval by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in the United States as well as the Central Bank of Ireland, and is expected to occur in Q2 FY20.

Steve Hare, Sage's CEO said: "Our vision of becoming a great SaaS company for customers and colleagues alike means we will continue to focus on serving small and medium sized customers with subscription software solutions for Accounting and Financials and People and Payroll.

"Payments and banking services remain an integral part of Sage's value proposition and we will deliver them through our growing network of partnerships, including Elavon."