Another financial operation on the Italy-France axis. Worldline, the transalpine group of digital payments, has in fact acquired 80% of Axepta Italia, which is part of Bnl, the bank which in turn passed under the control of the French group BNP Paribas in 2006. The acquisition is worth 180 million euros and reinforces a partnership that had already materialized a couple of months ago when Axepta Benelux and Worldline had together closed a transaction which saw Axepta take home part of the assets of Worldline in Luxembourg and of Ingenico (also controlled by the French) in Belgium. Ingenico is a historic French group, founded in 1980 and inventor of the payment terminal for ATMs (the so-called POS), an instrument that is about to be overtaken by online payments and 2.0 solutions, but despite this, in October 2020 it was bought by Worldline (94% of the capital, with a share still held by Bank of America) and still today it is valued at around 2,5 billion by three heavyweights of American private equity, Apollo, Cerberus and Platinum, which according to the French press they would set their sights on him.
Returning to the Axepta transaction, the closing is expected by early 2022 and Worldline expects the deal to add annual revenues of around €50 million once completed, with average double-digit growth expected over the next 4 years. Bnl will keep 20% of the capital. The French move confirms that the Italian digital payments market, however dominated by Nexi (which after the merger with Sia is also Worldwide's main competitor on the European scene), is very interesting: in a country where cash still dominates, the cashless sector objectively has ample room for growth. If anything, the acquisition is not entirely convincing on the Italian side, where there are fears of employment repercussions on the company which currently employs 110 people. According to Fabi, First Cisl, Fisac Cgil, Uilca and Unisin, the operation "does not bring any added value on a strategic level to the positioning of the Bnl-Bnp group, which on the contrary ousts itself from a fundamental sector".
