Danske Bank A/S has entered into an agreement with OP Financial Group in Finland and the consortium of banks behind Vipps in Norway to merge the three mobile payment providers MobilePay, Vipps and Pivo.
The ambition is to create Europe’s best and most comprehensive digital wallet. Serving 11 million users and over 330,000 shops and web shops, the company will be one of the largest bank-owned mobile payment providers in Europe.
The parties wish to join forces to further strengthen product development and innovation and thereby provide a market-leading customer experience within payment solutions. In addition, the parties plan to invest heavily in e-commerce, which has been growing rapidly in recent years, and to ensure users access to mobile cross-border payments.
The merger is expected to result in a one-off gain for Danske Bank of approximately DKK 400-500 million. The merger is conditional on approval by the relevant authorities, including the European Commission. Final approval is expected in the second half of 2021 or in early 2022.
The banks behind Vipps will own 65% of the new parent company, Vipps AS, Danske Bank will own 25% and the OP Financial Group will own 10%.
Glenn Söderholm, Head of Personal & Business Customers in Danske Bank, stated:
“MobilePay has been a fantastic success. At Danske Bank, we are proud to have developed MobilePay, which is providing free, user-friendly and innovative solutions to our users and easy, seamless payment solutions to businesses. However, it is very expensive to compete with global competitors in this space and in order to continue to develop the most attractive solutions for our customers, MobilePay must be part of something bigger to gain scale and pool investments for further innovation.
No partnership would be better than teaming up with Norwegian Vipps – it is the perfect match for MobilePay. At the same time, it is a great strength that Pivo, owned by Finland’s largest bank, OP, will also be part of the merger. We are proud to take part in creating a new and future-oriented fintech business in the Nordic region, and Danske Bank will continue to be a dedicated co-owner of the new business.”
