Wordline – Equens merger in the making

French-Dutch marriage

Several days after Visa Inc. announced it would buy back Visa Europe, another merger is on the horizon for the payment service industry as French Worldline and Dutch Equens will join forces in a new merger company called Equens Worldline Company. It should become fully operational in the second quarter of 2016.

Worldline would have 63.6 % of shares in the new company for its share of the financial and payment acceptance processing activities. Equens’ current shareholders (the Dutch banks ABN AMRO, DZ BANK, ICBPI, ING and Rabobank) will get the remaining 36.4 %.

Worldline will also pay 72 million euro for Paysquare, Equens’ commercial acquiring activities and responsible for the payment transaction of some 120,000 retailers hailing from 4 countries.

16 billion transactions per year

Last year, Equens handled 5 billion transactions in stores and ATM pick-ups, but still posted a 7 million euro net loss – after restructuring costs. Operational profit was 20 million euro, on a 357 million euro turnover. Worldline on the other hand dealt with 1.5 billion card transactions and 655 million eCommerce transactions in 2014, resulting in a 1.149 billion euro company turnover and a 100 million euro net profit.

The new company will handle 16 billion transactions (10 billion transfers and 6 billion store and ATM transactions) and take care of 100 million cards. Equens Wordlline Company will have offices in 8 countries.