The deal will combine Visa with Visa Europe to create a single global company.
The companies were separated in 2007, as part of Visa’s reorganization to go public. At that time, Visa Europe was granted the put option, which would allow Visa to acquire all of Visa Europe’s outstanding capital stock from its owners.
Owned and operated by member banks and other payment service providers, Visa Europe currently processes over 18 billion transactions annually, and partners with close to 3,000 financial institutions in 38 countries.
With this investment, around 3,000 European issuers, over 500 million card accounts and more than €1.5 trillion in payments volumes will be added to Visa portfolio.
Visa Europe CEO Nicolas Huss said: "Integrating into one global business will ensure we have the financial strength and operational scale necessary to accelerate the next generation of payments throughout Europe.
"This will enable us to deliver world class solutions to our clients and open up exciting professional opportunities for our employees."
After bringing the companies’ operations under one roof, the European clients will have access to Visa’s scale and resources, as well as investments in technology and differentiated products and services.
The deal will also enable faster growth and adoption of mobile payments in Europe as Visa has launched new tokenization services, made strategic investments in other enabling technologies, ecommerce and P2P payment capabilities, as well as opened several global innovation centers.
The acquisition is scheduled for completion in Visa’s fiscal third quarter of 2016, upon receiving regulatory approvals.
Image: Visa facilitates electronic funds transfers through credit cards and debit cards. Photo: courtesy of Anusorn P nachol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
