S Group is a renowned Finnish cooperative retail company group comprised by the SOK Corporation with its subsidiaries and 21 regional and 8 local cooperatives. With more than 2 million members and 40,000 employees, S Group spans market segments for grocery and consumer goods, petro service station and fuel, travel industry and hospitality business, automotive and accessories trade and the agricultural trade.

"VeriFone presented us with a superior payments solution that meets the diverse needs of our business units," said Mika Arponen, senior manager and head of Payment Services with S Group. "The payment process is very critical to support our business process and continuity. Cooperation with VeriFone provides us the opportunity to offer our customers the future of new payment methods such as contactless and mobile payments."

VeriFone will provide a comprehensive PaaS offering including software, estate management, maintenance, integration, security and gateway services. The agreement also included new payment systems that account for about 15 percent of the total contract value.

"S Group's decision to choose Point over competitors reflects the value that our payment-as-a-service all-in-one model brings to the modern retail environment," said Point CEO Johan Tjärnberg. "S Group is a tremendous co-op enterprise that reaches into virtually all aspects of retail commerce in Finland, as well as into neighboring countries, and we look forward to working with them to modernize payment across their many businesses."

Point will provide S Group with a range of stand-alone, portable and unattended payment systems in food market checkout lanes, restaurants, retail gasoline outlets and pumps, and other locations. Deployments will begin this year with the majority of systems being installed in 2013 and completion scheduled in 2014.