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Norway's BBS and Denmark's PBS, two Nordic card processors, are coming together to form Northern European Transaction Services (Nets). The new company will offer card processing and collection services to Nordic and European banks.
BBS and PBS will each own 50 percent each of Nets. To facilitate its expansion in Europe, Nets will seek additional investors, the two firms say.
?Within the next couple of years, Europe will have fewer and larger processing companies,? Flemming L. Jensen, CEO of PBS and vice-chairman of Nets' board, says in a statement. ?Nets aims to be one of those.?
The consolidation process has already started in the European processing market, largely as a result of SEPA. In 2006, a new processor called Equens was formed from the merger of Netherlands-based Interpay and German processor Transaktionsinstitut. Also, French IT firm Atos Origin bought Belgian processors Banksys and Bank Card Company (BCC) last year. Atos then merged Banksys and BCC with Atos Worldline, its own payment processing unit.
PBS and BBS currently handle 2.8 billion transactions annually between them. Nets aims to be processing 5 million transactions annually by 2008, PBS and BBS say.
Nets gets off to a head start with the announcement from Nordea, a leading Nordic bank, that it will be using Nets to consolidate its card acquiring and processing in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In a statement, Nets says it is negotiating similar arrangements with other Nordic banks.
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