Nets Looks To Widen European Scope With Finnish Acquisitions

Denmark-based payments platform Nets is acquiring two Finnish companies, Poplatek and its spinoff Poplapay, to enhance its payments capabilities and better serve merchants across Europe, Nets announced Thursday (Jan. 9).

With software developer Poplatek and payment terminal service provider Poplapay, Nets will amplify its payment terminal service competencies. Adding the tech expertise from both companies will fortify Nets’ position to offer industry-leading solutions for payment acceptance.

“Our ambition is to become a pan-European payments champion,” Robert Hoffmann, CEO of merchant services said. “Poplatek is an agile and high performing tech company, and Poplapay has solid capabilities within payment terminal services. Together, they will help us increase our flexibility to better accommodate different customer needs across Europe and provide best-in-class payment acceptance solutions, also going forward.”

Together, Poplatek and Poplapay have roughly 5 million euros ($5.5 million) in annual revenue and employ approximately 40 people.

Poplatek CEO Mikko Virtanen said the company is looking forward to working with an industry leader like Nets and “taking part in the European journey that Nets has embarked on,” adding their combined skill sets will help “develop solutions for the benefit of merchants across Europe.”

“We are thrilled about the opportunity to take our service capabilities to the international playground,” said Poplapay CEO Petri Ahti. “Becoming part of the Nets family paves the way for us to increase our market reach and gives us resources to further improve our services for existing customers as well as accelerating development of new services designed to fulfill the demands of European customers.”

In July Nets announced a partnership with Swish, the No. 1 payments app in Sweden, on an in-store payments pilot program. While Swish had been primarily used for account-to-account transactions and, more recently, eCommerce payments, it is now expanding into the retail and service sectors.

“Seven million Swedes walk around with the Swish app in their pockets, and it’s clear that the demand for easier in-store payments is increasing,” said Pär Ekroth, marketing manager of Swish. “As such, we are pleased to offer mobile payments functionality to our customers.”