Nets buys Polish payment provider PeP for $455m
Nets, the Danish real-time payments platform which sold its account-to-account payments business to Mastercard for $3.2 billion last year, has just bought Polish merchant acquirer Polskie ePłatności (PeP), one of the five biggest payment terminal operators in the country.
The deal, valued at €405 million ($455 million), will give Nets access to more than 125,000 point-of-sales (PoS) terminals.
Nets says Poland is “one of the most attractive geographies in Europe given its low card penetration and double-digit growth in card usage”.
According to a JP Morgan report last year, the Polish mobile commerce market is now worth roughly €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion).
Read more: SME challenger bank NorthOne raises $21m Series A
State initiatives from the National Bank of Poland, including its raising the payment limit for contactless transactions last year, are also helping promote in-store electronic payment solutions.
“PeP is the fastest growing payment technology company in one of the fastest growing digital payment economies in Europe,” says Nets Group CEO Bo Nilsson.
“With PeP’s strength with SME merchants on card acceptance and point-of-sales terminals, this deal has a convincing strategic fit, completing our offering to merchants in Poland,” Nilsson adds.
PeP moves to Nets with more than 600 employees and expected net revenues of €55 million ($62 milllion) for 2020. The deal is still subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close within the third quarter of 2020.
This acquisition of PeP follows Nets’ recent purchase of compatriot firm Dotpay, and its establishment of a “strategic alliance” with Przelewy24, a Polish money transfer service.
