Nets partners with Spire for Dankort mobile payments

Fresh from its $4.5bn IPO, Nordic payments processor Nets has picked Spire as its partner to help with the physical roll out of mobile payments for Dankort customers.

Spire has built a Bluetooth low energy (BLE) payments acceptance device, which Nets will use to upgrade thousands of its point of sale terminals across Denmark starting this year.

Dankort is a debit card linked to a bank account that can only be used in Denmark. There’s also the option to buy a Dankort/Visa card for payments abroad. Nets is bringing Dankort to mobile this Autumn.

According to Danish media outlets there is growing friction between Nets and the country’s biggest bank, Danske Bank, around mobile payments. The outlets report that the bank is in talks with Nets to integrate its popular MobilePay service with Nets new mobile payments offerings, but the parties are still in disagreement.

This comes after reports that big Danish retailers including Coop are pushing back on MobilePay being used in their stores and calling on Nets and Danskebank to work together on a solution.

Nets

Nets, an international digital payments network, forms the backbone of the Nordic payments landscape, connecting banks, businesses, the public sector, merchants and consumers. In Denmark, the firm says 98% of in-store transactions touch at least one Nets service.

Asger Hattel, Group EVP and head of Merchant Services at Nets says several Danish banks will roll out their wallet solutions this Autumn as the domestic debit card becomes mobile-enabled.

“We see this as an exciting opportunity for consumers and merchants alike to benefit from this innovative payment technology,” he says.

“Acceptance is the key to success, and in collaboration with Spire Payments this project will facilitate rapid nationwide coverage.”

In June, Nets said it had been picked by BOKIS – a Danish banking collective of 62 small and mid-size banks, plus regional banks Jyske Bank, Sydbank, Spar Nord Bank, Arbejdernes Landsbank and Nykredit Bank to launch a new mobile wallet solution, powered by HCE and tokenisation.

HCE and tokenisation also underpins the domestic scheme in Denmark, Dankort, which will be available on the mobile this autumn.

Nets $4.5bn IPO

Nets’ $4.5bn IPO has been tapped as the biggest in Europe since Brexit.

The announcement it was planning to go public came around two years after it was snapped up from a group of Nordic banks including Danske Bank, Nordea and DNB by Advent International and Bain Capital alongside Danish pension fund ATP for USD3.1bn.

It did not come as too much of a surprise as Bain and Advent also own WorldPay, which they bought back in 2010 from RBS and took public in London’s biggest fintech IPO to date last year.

Nets is headquartered in the Danish capital, but spans across Norway, Finland, Sweden and Estonia with growing presence in the wider Baltic region.

Its corporate division offers payments platform for things like recurring bills and credit transactions for businesses. Meanwhile its financial and network services offer payment processing services for 200 issuers of cards in the region, plus things like fraud and dispute services. Meanwhile its merchant services division offers merchants payment acceptance solutions.

The firm’s revenue last year was DKK6.84bn with EBITDA of DKK2.25bn. The firm says it processed 7.3bn card transactions last year across 35.1m cards. It has 300,000 merchants on its books of which 10% are online, 240,000 corporate customers and serves more than 240 banks.

Activity is only expected to continue around core financial software systems providers in the coming years. In July MasterCard confirmed months of rumour with the acquisition of a 92.4% stake in UK based payments systems VocaLink for £700 million ($920 million).

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