Ingenico 8.6B Sale to Worldline – EMV Kiosk

Ingenico Acquired By Worldline

From TechCrunch Feb03 — Some consolidation is afoot among the payments behemoths of Europe. Smaller, newer fintech companies are eating into their market dominance by adapting faster to changing spending habits, while also looking to capitalize on economies of scale.  [Thanks to Frank at Olea Kiosks]

Today Worldline, a financial services company that provides everything from in-store point-of-sale terminals through to online payments, data analytics, banking and fraud protection, announced that it would acquire Ingenico, the huge point-of-sale terminal provider that controls 37 percent of the market globally, in a cash and share deal that gives Ingenico a valuation of €7.8 billion ($8.6 billion at today’s exchange rates).

The deal underscores two big themes in fintech, and specifically payments. The first is that the shift in payments and spending habits to more digital platforms has meant an increasing amount of fragmentation in the payments space, with each player getting a cut of the transaction: this means that a company doing business in this area needs economy of scale in order to make decent returns. The deal will give both companies a lot more economy of scale.

The second is a bigger theme of