The deal was announced last December, but the exact amount had not been revealed at the time. The acquisition of PayNet, a company with less than EUR3 million in revenue a year, is part of the US company’s strategy to boost operations on the local electronic transactions market, as Euronet started to expand on the ATM segment.
The company has a network of 210 cash points throughout the country and plans to reach 400 to 450 machines by yearend.
Euronet has also signed agreements with a number of banks so that their customers can withdraw cash from its ATMs under better terms. Only Citi has publicly revealed it signed a partnership with Euronet so far. The company’s terminal network allows withdrawing and depositing cash, as well as payment of bills and recharging of prepaid cell phone cards.
The development of its own ATM network and the signing of partnerships with banks puts Euronet in direct competition with the major organizations like Visa and MasterCard, which make millions of euros a year from fees charged from banks for card transactions at ATMs other than their own.
Euronet says it bought PayNet to expand its presence on a developing market and to get the processor’s customer portfolio. PayNet manages a network of 730 ATMs and 2,600 POSs of several banks and processes payments made with 540,000 cards.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)