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In June 2021, Norwegian Vipps, Danish Mobilepay and Finnish Pivo announced that the three mobile wallets would merge.
On Friday, however, the first two announced that Pivo, owned by OP Bank in Finland, will not be allowed to participate. It happens after the European Commission “raised concerns” related to consolidation.
Concerned about market concentration
The Commission considers that the merger would have created too high a market situation in the Finnish wallet market. This is because Pivo and Mobilepay have shared the market in Finland.
– In Norway, Vipps is by far the largest operator and Mobilepay is the same in Denmark, but in Finland there are two main players. The EU feared that the merger would lead to too high market concentration, says Caroline Lunde, communications manager at Vipps.
A new formal application has now been submitted to the European Commission and the companies hope to receive approval before Christmas. Then work begins to build an organization in Norway, Finland and Denmark. This is what Vipps writes in a press release.
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– We are now entering with slightly fewer customers in Finland and only one brand instead of three, but the commission was so clear that it was necessary to make changes in Finland in order to progress through the approval process, says Lunde.
It will settle in several countries
In total, the merged company will have nearly 11 million users, 400,000 stores, and 900 million transactions annually.
– We will continue to grow in Norway and Denmark, in addition we will invest in growth and development in Finland and aim to be the leading mobile payment solution in Finland, says Rune Garborg, CEO of Vipps, in the press release.
In the long term, the goal is to establish itself in other European countries as well, and to be able to create a common European mobile wallet, adds Lunde.
Participation changed
When the merger was first announced, the banks behind Vipps would get a 65 percent stake, while Danske Bank and OP Bank would get a 25 percent and ten percent stake, respectively.
After OB Bank exits the merger, the banks behind Vipps will get a 72.2% stake, while Danske Bank will get a 27.8% stake.
This is despite Mobilepay being launched two years before Vipps, it has the most users and this 2021 he had nearly double the daily transaction amount like Vipps.(Terms)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and / or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases via links, which lead directly to our pages. Copying or other forms of use of all or part of the content may only take place with written permission or as permitted by law. For additional terms look at her.
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