Swiss payments processor SIX has acquired Austrian bank-backed PayLife for an undisclosed amount.
The sale - which has been ongoing for 18 months - was approved by the Austrian Cartel Court and completed yesterday.
PayLife currently has 1.4 million cards in circulation. In total, over 195 million transactions were processed by PayLife in the first half of 2013, with a sales volume of EUR10.14 billion. SIX has been PayLife's central processor since 2004.
PayLife last year contracted with VeriFone to update its entire POS estate to support contactless and NFC-based transactions via the Quick pre-paid card.
Since the introduction of Quick Contactless, more than 500,000 transactions have been performed and over 43,500 Quick contactless prepaid cards have been issued. There are currently around 6500 PayLife terminals equipped for contactless in Austria, and by the end of the year this number will have grown to more than 10,000.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of SIX, PayLife and its 330-strong staff will be incorporated into the company's Payment Services Division during the next few months.