Ingenico moves past POS with $1.7bn Bambora buy

Contact: Jordan McKee, Scott Denne

Ingenico scoops up yet another European payments service provider to fuel its evolution beyond a point-of-sale (POS) terminal supplier. Today’s $1.7bn pickup of Nordic mobile payments vendor Bambora marks its third acquisition of 2017, the payment giant’s busiest year of dealmaking to date.

Its two previous deals of the year brought it international expansion – into Ukraine and India. Yet where Ingenico has spent the most money has been growth beyond its core POS business into services and other payment channels. Prior to todays’ transaction, its $1.1bn purchase of e-commerce payments company GlobalCollect in 2014 had been its largest acquisition. It also spent $485m for transaction-processing services firm Ogone a year earlier. Since that deal, Ingenico has inked eight acquisitions, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase.

With the bulk of its revenue indexed to brick-and-mortar commerce – and more specifically, hardware sales – Ingenico realizes that it must craft a digital strategy that will ensure its relevance as more transactions flow into card-not-present channels. By reaching for omni-channel capabilities, Ingenico expands the role it can play within its retailer client base while embedding itself further in their commerce options.

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