Nets on a Quest for European Scale
The payment company wants to be a leading European player in a rapidly growing payment industry. Already a leading provider of digital payment products and services in the Nordic region, the group sees opportunities in scaling its digital payment platforms to offer digital payment solutions and value-added services to a European region where cash is still king.
For more than 50 years, digital payments have been a part of everyday life in Denmark – from PBS through Dankort to mobile payments which have become the new normal over the past three years. The cashless Vikings in the Nordic countries are regarded as front-runners in digital adoption. Today, more than 80 percent of all payments in the Nordic region are digital. And driving the conversion from cash to digital payments presents an advantage for Nets.
“Our expertise and scale from the Nordics give us a competitive advantage when expanding into Europe, and I am confident that we can become a key player within the European payments area. Contactless and real-time payments are both great examples of how through our innovation power, we can help provide a more digitised society and an easier everyday experience when conducting payments. That will pave the way for further expansion into the rest of Europe,” says Bo Nilsson, CEO of Nets Group.
Nets is a leading payment group in Scandinavia and facilitates more than eight billion transactions a year, and now the payment provider wants to play in another league. Nilsson explains how two main trends will shape the future European payment market:
“Large industry players are consolidating at a rapidly increasing pace, and American and European players are challenging us in our own backyard. But we also see a lot of opportunities to expand into Europe through both organic and acquisitive growth, meeting the competition head-on.”
European payments champion
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. According to Bo Nilsson, CEO of Nets Group, Germany in particular holds great growth potential due to its size, high consumption and the fact that three out of four payments in Germany are still cash-based. The first step from the Nordics into Europe was a merger with the German payment company Concardis last year – a key player within merchant payments in the entire DACH region. Since then, Nets has further expanded with both an acquisition and a partnership in Poland with two leading players within e-commerce, namely Dotpay / eCard and Przelewy24.
And size does matter. With the recent mergers, Nets further enforces its position as the second largest provider of payment services in Europe.
“As the number of transactions increases, the cost per transaction goes down. As our scale increases, we can be more focused across the group in our innovation efforts and, at the same time, be more cost-effective as we realise synergies and drive down costs per transaction. That allows us to be at the forefront of innovation in Europe,” Bo Nilsson concludes.
With the expansion into Europe, Nets aims to further strengthen the company’s innovation power and ability to develop solutions that meet the growing needs of businesses and consumers for more digitised and user-friendly solutions.
