Worldline and Equens join forces to become European leader

Worldline and Equens have jointly announced that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a strategic new entity. The strategic aim of the new entity is to be one of the leading and most innovative payment service providers for financial institutions and corporates in Europe.

Under the terms of the agreement this new entity, that will be branded ‘Equens Worldline Company’, will become the largest pan-European financial processor with more than 10 billion payment transfers, 6 billion POS and ATM transactions, 100 million cards under management and office locations in 8 European countries. The transaction is expected to close during the second quarter of 2016.

Under the terms of the MoU agreement, the transaction entails two parts:

Financial Processing: A new entity will be created, branded as Equens Worldline Company. Worldline will receive 63.6% of the newly created Equens Worldline Company shares in exchange for the contribution of its current Financial and Acquiring processing activities in Germany, France and Benelux into Equens. The current Equens shareholders, ABN AMRO Bank, DZ BANK, ICBPI, ING and Rabobank will stay as shareholders and own the remaining 36.4%.

Commercial Acquiring: Our commercial acquiring subsidiary PaySquare will be acquired by Worldline. The activities of PaySquare will be combined with Worldline’s current activities within their Merchant Services and Terminals Global Business Line.

Worldline and Equens consider this step as a major milestone in the consolidation of the European payments market. Through the combination of Equens and Worldline’s complementary skills and capabilities, our clients will benefit from a substantially enlarged product and service offering, new and innovative business opportunities and also in terms of time-to-market.

Michael Steinbach, Equens CEO: “I am very excited about this step, which consequently follows Equens’ proven strategy since our foundation in 2006. By joining forces with a highly respected, innovative and truly pan-European company in the payments market, economies of scale and scope will be maximised.”

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