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EU Commission approves merger of MobilePay and Vipps

Tuesday 25 October 2022 08:18 CET | News

The EU Commission has approved the merger of mobile payment companies MobilePay and Vipps into a new corporate group.

 

Having as its basis an agreement between Danske Bank and the consortium of banks behind Vipps in Norway, the corporate group is expected to become a reality as of 1 November 2022, and to begin working towards the creation of a prominent Nordic and European mobile wallet.

Vipps and MobilePay’s corporate group will have from the beginning approximately 11 million users, over 400,000 shops and webshops as customers, and around 900 million transactions on a yearly basis. MobilePay representatives have stated in the press release that with this merger, the group is looking to create a complete supplier of mobile payment services in Europe with a basis in growth and innovation to benefit their users and business customers. 

Initially, the group is set on prioritising the establishment of a new organisation across the locations in Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Lithuania. Additionally, the group will start to migrate to Vipps’ technology platform, which will contain all payment solutions, users, and business customers; the common platform is believed to enable pool investments and provide larger scales to develop customer solutions in a more fast and efficient manner. As stated by company officials, the top priority of the group will be to strengthen solutions within ecommerce and mobile payments across borders. 

The EU Commission has approved the merger of mobile payment companies MobilePay and Vipps into a new corporate group.

Merger organisational details

The new corporate group will keep its already known brands; MobilePay’s Danish and Finnish customers will not experience any other changes apart from new solutions occurring at a faster speed. A 72,2% of the new corporate group, Vipps MobilePay will be owned by the banks behind Vipps, whereas Danske Bank will own 27,8%. Vipps MobilePay will be headquartered in Oslo and will be in the future subject to supervision by the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authorities.

The current CEO of Vipps, Rune Garborg, will become the CEO of the corporate group, and Claus Bunkenborg, the current CEO of MobilePay will be appointed as the Deputy CEO. The chairman of the board of directors of the new corporate group will be Kjerstin Braathen, current chairman of Vipps and CEO of the largest bank in Norway, DNB, with the remaining members of the leadership team and board of directors remaining to be announced once the last elements of the deal are in place. 

Merger previous announcements

At its initial stage in June 2021, when the announcement of the merger was first made, Danske Bank A/S, OP Financial Group, and the consortium of banks behind Vipps in Norway had an agreement to merge three mobile payment providers: MobilePay, Vipps, and Pivo. The involved parties were looking to join forces and work towards strengthening product development and innovation, as well as investing in ecommerce and ensuring users’ access to mobile cross-border payments. In September 2022, following concerns expressed by the Commission regarding two major Finnish players being involved in the merger, MobilePay and Pivo, the owner banks agreed to proceed without OP Financial Group as co-owner, thus resulting in their mobile wallet Pivo not being part of the merger. 

Source: Link


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Keywords: merger, mobile payments, digital wallet, cross-border payments, cross-border ecommerce, online payments, European Commission
Categories: Payments & Commerce
Companies: EU Commission, MobilePay, Vipps
Countries: Europe
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Payments & Commerce

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