SIA completes acquisition of Unicredit card ops in three European countries
Friday 23rd December 2016 saw the completion of the acquisition by SIA of the processing activities of around 13.5 million payment cards and the management of 206,000 POS terminals and 12,000 ATM terminals in Italy, Germany and Austria from Unicredit Business Integrated Solutions (UBIS), a company in the Unicredit Group, for the sum of €500 million.
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The operation, effective from 1st January 2017, also includes a ten-year outsourcing contract to SIA Group for the supply of processing services concerning transactions made using debit, credit and prepaid cards, and for the management of POS and ATM terminals.
“This acquisition is part of the SIA strategic plan that has as its primary goal the consolidation of our competitive positioning at international level. This operation is characterized by its sustainable impact both from an economic point of view - because it will lead to a growth in size in 2017 of more than 20% of revenues (based on 2015 pro-forma figures) and to greater economies of scale - and a social point of view because the integration of UBIS activities and 382 people into SIA Group will not lead to a reduction in staff, as often happens with this kind of operation” - commented Massimo Arrighetti, CEO of SIA.