In addition to merchant acquiring activities, Worldline will enter into a commercial partnership with the Italian lender to distribute its payment products and services to the bank’s merchant customers in Italy
Worldline to acquire Banco Desio merchant acquiring operations. (Credit: Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash)
French payment services company Worldline has entered into a binding agreement to acquire the merchant acquiring activities of Banco Desio.
Banco Desio is an Italian banking group with a network of more than 230 branches and manages marketing and distribution of over 19,000 POS to the merchants within its network.
Its merchant acquiring portfolio is claimed to deliver payment solutions to nearly 15,000 merchants and generate around 40 million transactions per year.
In addition, Worldline will enter into a commercial partnership with the Italian lender to distribute its payment products and services to the bank’s merchant customers in Italy.
The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023 and would bring in extra revenue of around €15m within the first year.
Worldline CEO Gilles Grapinet said: “This operation is fully in line with our strategy to further expand our Merchant Services activities towards the South of Europe and in particular in Italy, a highly attractive and strategic market for Worldline.
“This transaction offers attractive development opportunities for Worldline in the coming years, leveraging a strong banking network as a key commercial channel in order to distribute Worldline’s full suite of end-to-end payment solutions to merchants.
“With this transaction, Worldline keeps on playing the leading role in the consolidation of the European payments industry, with a focus on value-creating consolidation opportunities, enhancing Worldline scale, reach and significant presence.”
Worldline said that the transaction, which follows its acquisition of Axepta Italy earlier this year, is in line with its strategy to strengthen its presence in Italy.
According to the payment services firm, Italy is the third largest economy in Europe with a high cash penetration, where cash accounts for nearly 76% of total payment volume in 2021.
The country has seen a rapid shift from cash to card and electronic payment adoption and has one of the highest POS densities per inhabitants in Europe.
Worldline said that the transactions acquired are well balanced by card type, with credit cards, PagoBancomat, and debit and prepaid cards.
Earlier this month, Worldline integrated its fraud management technology into the Finland-based S-Bank to enable real-time fraud detection for debit and credit cards.