Nordic payments group Nets is planning to merge with German peer Concardis, in a reported $6bn transaction.
The two companies announced that Concardis would merge with Nets, to form a company with €1.3bn (£1.1bn) of annual net revenue. The deal will create a business with 2018 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of €500m ($587m) on revenue and 3,500 staff. The merger is priced at roughly $6bn according to a report by Reuters.
Private equity giants Advent and Bain, who own Germany-based Concardis, will swap their holdings in Concardis for Nets shares. Their peer Hellman & Friedman, which backs the Scandinavia-headquartered Nets, will see its holding diluted.
Advent and Bain formerly owned Nets as well as Concardis, before listing the business in 2016. Hellman & Friedman took it private again earlier this year, though Advent and Bain remained minority investors.
Nets is a trusted partner to more than 300,000 merchants, including 30,000 online merchants, more than 240,000 enterprises and over 240 banks across the Nordic and Baltic regions.
Its services for merchants include Storebox, the digital receipt and loyalty solution, an option to tailor offerings to their customers, its MyPayment App that gives the user relevant data and insights about their customers, and Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) that lets merchants’ customers pay in their own currency when travelling abroad.
In 2017, Nets’ Merchant Services acquired approximately two billion card transactions from international branded cards with a transaction value of around DKK 528bn.
With increase3d regaultion pushing payments companies to invest in compliance, many have been forced to consolidate.
Worldline recently bought Switzerland’s Six Payment Services, while London-based FinTech investor Anacap bought out e-commerce specialist Heidelpay last year.
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