Minority shareholders Hedosophia (24 percent), the Latsis family (13 percent), and Deca (10 percent) agreed to sale of their shares to J.P. Morgan in a deal exceeding USD 800 million euros, as reported by Yahoo Finance.
Viva Wallet‘s majority shareholders Haris Karonis and Makis Antypas maintain the majority stake of 51 percent and will continue to oversee the company’s operation, as they stated earlier in 2022. Greek Reporter states that official announcements about the Greek startup’s deal are expected later in December 2022.
The first news of the deal emerged at the end of January 2022, when the Sales and Purchase agreement was signed. At the time, there was no mention of the amount of money involved. Greek regulatory authorities approved the sale in September 2022. The deal meant that Viva Wallet, which identifies as an entirely cloud-based neobank, became the first Greek unicorn, a term used in the venture capital industry to describe a private startup company with a value of over USD 1 billion.
Viva Wallet has a presence in 24 European countries and employs over 600 employees, providing services in 19 different languages, and payments in 10 currencies. It is an official member of Visa and MasterCard. In 2020, Viva Wallet had revenues of EUR 44 million, which almost tripled in size to around EUR 130 million in 2021, Greek Reporter concludes.
Viva Wallet provides card acceptance services through its POS application, add-on Google play devices, and advanced payment systems in online stores, according to Yahoo Finance.
In November 2022, the Greek fintech partnered with Klarna to help merchants meet the needs of a new generation of shoppers demanding more flexible payment alternatives. Earlier, in September 2022, Viva Wallet’s French division enabled their merchant network in France to accept CB payments currently made with 74 million CB cards. In May 2022, the fintech enabled merchants across Europe to accept Discover, Diners Club, and network alliance cards.
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