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Ingenico S.A. is buying easycash Beteiligungen GmbH, a Germany-based payment processor, for $426 million (290 million euro), from Warburg Pincus LLC, a New York-based private equity firm, the point-of-sale terminal maker announced today. Easycash provides POS terminal sales, transaction processing and loyalty programs in Germany, Ingenico says, noting it will use easycash to "leverage on the growth of payment transactions in the coming years." During a conference call with analysts last week, Ingenico CEO Philippe Lazare said Ingenico is targeting Eastern Europe for expansion. Gil Luria, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles, tells CardLine sister publication ISO&Agent Weekly Ingenico is integrating vertically into the payments value chain. "They're going away from just providing the terminal. The reason they're doing that is that part of the payments value chain has higher growth and higher [profit] margins," Luria says. "They feel that can help the company grow faster and become more profitable." Lazare said he is not aware of competing POS makers VeriFone Holdings Corp. and Hypercom Corp. also offering payment-processing services. "From what I know, they don't," he says. "Not so far." San Jose, Calif.-based VeriFone also is interested in adding more payments-related services but is doing it "more organically," Luria says. And Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Hypercom is "far more focused on making their operation more efficient," he says. Easycash has 275,000 POS terminals, which generate more than 1 billion transactions, Lazare says, estimating that approximately 33% of the terminals are Ingenico devices. Easycash customers will not be forced to switch their terminals to Ingenico devices. "Most of the time customers are making their own choices, and we'll respect that," Lazare says. Easycash generated revenue of $126 million (85.7 million euro) in 2008, Ingenico says. Warburg Pincus bought easycash in 2006 from First Data Corp. The sale price was not disclosed.