Worldline announces a major strategic commercial acquiring alliance with ANZ Bank in Australia

Worldline announces a major strategic commercial acquiring alliance with ANZ Bank in Australia

• Acquisition of a controlling stake (51%) in the commercial acquiring business of ANZ for a cash consideration of c. AUD 485 million
   
• Creation of a 51%-49% joint-venture controlled by Worldline to operate and develop commercial acquiring services in Australia with ANZ Bank
   
• Strategic opportunity to expand Merchant Services outside of Europe with a unique access to one of the largest payments markets
   
• Strong value creation through synergies derived from Worldline’s payment technology stack roll-out, enhanced scale and growth acceleration
   
• First success of the newly created Merchant Services-Financial Institutions division, leveraging the compelling strengths of the Worldline-Ingenico combination

Bezons, December 14, 2020 – Worldline [Euronext: WLN], a Global leader in the payments industry, today announced the signing of a major strategic commercial acquiring alliance with ANZ Bank, one of the largest banks in Asia-Pacific and Australia’s 3^rd largest acquirer with a c. 20% share of transaction volumes processed in Australia¹.

Gilles Grapinet, Worldline’s Chairman and CEO, said: “The strategic alliance announced today between Worldline and ANZ is a landmark transaction for the Group and I am very honored that Worldline has been selected by ANZ to take over the control of its merchant acquiring business as the long term partner of choice to deliver state-of-the-art products and services to its very large portfolio of merchant customers.

Australia is a highly attractive strategic market as it is very close to Europe in terms of market structure, standards and technology, with a high level adoption of electronic payments. Backed by a solid macroeconomic environment and a strong long-term growth potential, the Australian market represents a rare opportunity to scale-up our platforms and roll-out our innovative solutions in very close partnership with such a leading institution as ANZ.

This long-term and exclusive joint-venture is based on a shared vision for delivering value added Merchant Acquiring products and services in Australia, through the combination of Worldline’s global scale, best-in-class technologies and expertise, with ANZ’s vast banking footprint and distribution power. We are particularly pleased to welcome soon circa 200 merchant acquiring and payment technology experts from ANZ.