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Worldline, a European payment and transactional services company, on Monday announced it has reached a deal to acquire Ingenico, a global leader in seamless payment across in-store, online and mobile channels, for €7.8 billion ($8.6 billion at today’s exchange rates) to create a payment processor global powerhouse.

According to a statement released on Monday by Worldline, under the terms of the transaction, to be implemented through a tender offer, Ingenico shareholders would receive 11 Worldline shares and €160.5 in cash for 7 Ingenico shares, with a mix and match mechanism. The offer represents a premium of 24 per cent based on the last one month respective volume weighted average share prices, and subject to customary closing customary conditions precedent, including regulatory, merger control clearances and information and/or consultation with employee representative bodies, as well as Worldline shareholders’ approval.

“Worldline’s acquisition of Ingenico creates a payment processor powerhouse in Europe, as it marks the biggest global deal of the year so far,” said Vlad Totia, Payments Analyst at GlobalData, in a statement sent today to Financial Nigeria.  “With the democratization of payment methods, merchants are put in a delicate situation where they have to adapt very fast to accepting an increasing number of payment methods. This trend has not gone unnoticed by the market as the last two years have been marked by significant merger and acquisition (M&A) deals in the payments processor space.”

He said that, as payment methods become more diverse, merchant acquirers need global reach, local expertise and economies of scale in order to stay ahead of customer’s purchase demands. By combining the two companies, Worldline will heavily consolidate its European presence by accessing Ingenico’s approximately 550,000 merchants. Worldline will also be tapping into the Chinese market where Ingenico has quite a foothold. In 2018 Ingenico partnered with WeChat Pay, AliPay and China UnionPay, becoming one of the first global payment service providers (PSP) to fully integrate with Tencent’s payment ecosystem and over 1.1 billion users.

Worldline Chairman and CEO Gilles Grapinet will become CEO of the combined company and Ingenico Chairman Bernard Bourigeaud is expected to become non-executive Chairman of the Board of Directors upon closing.

“I am proud to announce that today is a great day for Worldline and for Ingenico, and more widely for our Payment industry: Together we create the European World-Class leader in digital payments,” said Gilles Grapinet. He said Worldline deeply respects Ingenico and its team for the deep business repositioning of their company realized over the last years into one of the largest European payment service providers with outstanding global positions in online payments and merchant acquiring.

Totia said that as people get more comfortable with financial technology (fintech) innovations and having different payment methods, more similar M&A deals are poised to happen in the near future.