SIA announces completion of the aquisition from Unicredit of eMoney processing activities in Italy, Germany and Austria

CEO Massimo Arrighetti: “This operation, sustainable from an economic and social perspective, allows us to strengthen our European leadership and to grow in size” The acquisition – effective from 1st January 2017 – concerns the management of around 13.5 million payment cards, 206,000 POS terminals and 12,000 ATMs of UBIS.

Friday 23rd December 2016 saw the completion of the acquisition by SIA of the processing activities of around 13.5 million payment cards and the management of 206,000 POS terminals and 12,000 ATM terminals in Italy, Germany and Austria from Unicredit Business Integrated Solutions (UBIS), a company in the Unicredit Group, for the sum of €500 million.

The operation, effective from 1st January 2017, also includes a ten-year outsourcing contract to SIA Group for the supply of processing services concerning transactions made using debit, credit and prepaid cards, and for the management of POS and ATM terminals.

“This acquisition is part of the SIA strategic plan that has as its primary goal the consolidation of our competitive positioning at international level. This operation is characterized by its sustainable impact both from an economic point of view – because it will lead to a growth in size in 2017 of more than 20% of revenues (based on 2015 pro-forma figures) and to greater economies of scale – and a social point of view because the integration of UBIS activities and 382 people into SIA Group will not lead to a reduction in staff, as often happens with this kind of operation” – commented Massimo Arrighetti, CEO of SIA.

SIA is European leader in the design, creation and management of technology infrastructures and services for Financial Institutions, Central Banks, Corporates and Public Administration bodies, in the areas of payments, e-money, network services and capital markets. SIA Group provides its services in over 40 countries, and also operates through its subsidiaries in Hungary and South Africa. The company has offices in Milan, Brussels and Utrecht.

In 2015, SIA managed the settlement of 9.9 billion transactions, 3.3 billion card transactions, 2.8 billion payments, 41.7 billion financial transactions and carried 358 terabytes of data on the network. The Group is made up of seven companies: the parent SIA, the Italian companies Emmecom (innovative network applications for banks and businesses), Pi4Pay (advanced collection and payment services), TSP (front-end services for companies and P.A.) and Ubiq (innovative technology solutions for marketing), Perago in South Africa and SIA Central Europe in Hungary. The Group, which has approximately 1,600 employees, closed 2015 with revenues of €449.4 million.