Mastercard to acquire Nets for €2.85 billion

In its biggest acquisition to date, Mastercard has agreed to purchase Nets’ account-to-account payment business, a leading European PayTech company. The transaction further strengthens MasterCard's existing capabilities with regards to its proven real-time and bill pay technology. It will also advance Mastercard’s strategy to capitalize on the fast-growing global real-time payments opportunity

The Deal

Value: €2.85bn

Announced: 6 August 2019

Financial Advisor to Mastercard: Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Financial Advisor to Nets: Credit Suisse

Why?

Strategic Rationale:

Post-acquisition, Nets' technology and teams will boost Mastercard’s existing account-to-account (A2A) capabilities across 3 principal areas:

• Value-added services, like data analytics and fraud protection

• Applications for end-user solutions now delivered with greater speed and scale

• Infrastructure – complements Mastercard’s existing technologies, catering to a more expansive customer base, leveraging its sophisticated, highly scalable, flexible and easy-to-deploy assets

“This deal strengthens our unique position as the one-stop partner for any bank, merchant or government’s payment needs. The combination with existing Mastercard assets such as Vocalink, Transfast, and Transactis delivers real-time payment capabilities, innovation and expertise that are truly differentiated.” – Michael Miebach, Mastercard's chief product & innovation officer

Expanding this, there are potential synergies to be realised with bill pay solutions through the integration of Transactis' solutions, a company that Mastercard acquired just months prior.