Highlight:

  • Investment firm based out of London is all set to takeover a majority stake of Market Pay, the European retail giant’s (Carrefour) progressive digital payments platform.

Carrefour, the French retail multinational, is set to divest a majority stake in its digital payment platform Market Pay to the UK-based firm dubbed AnaCap Financial Partners.

AnaCap Financial Partners, headquartered in the UK, is geared up to acquire 60% of the French retail giant’s payment arm in a deal estimated for EUR 300 million.

About Market Pay

Market Pay was created in-house by the French retail giant in 2016 to manage 5 million cards and over a billion annual transactions. Strengthened by the company’s retail dominance in Europe, the payment system runs via a unified data platform to offer a range of payment solutions focused on merchants and fintech firms.

Nassim Cherchali, Partner for M and amp;A at AnaCap, says: “Market Pay is uniquely positioned at the heart of the deep, fragmented and rapidly developing European payments ecosystem, benefiting from the consumer shift from cash to card and offline to online.”

AnaCap aims to benefit from the cash to digital payments transition that has recently been accelerated by the Coronavirus pandemic, penetrating new markets across Europe and into various eCommerce domains.

Essential Market Pay statistics

  • 5 million cards in use
  • Experience in handling 1.3 billion transactions every year
  • 45,000 payment terminals operated
  • 2020 net sales expected to be EUR 30 million

Frederic Mazurier, Executive President, Market Pay (Carrefour Group), says, the move presents “an exciting new chapter for the company in 2021 and beyond,” and aims to leverage AnaCap’s expertise and substantial investment portfolio in payments ecosystems to further develop the Market Pay platform.”

The 60% stake in the French retail giant marks AnaCap’s pilot project into the French market where Carrefour is located. The acquisition is followed by eight similar acquisitions in the DACH region, comprising countries like Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. This is a part of a buy and build strategy centered around heidelpay GmbH, a German digital payments business bought by KKR last year.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2021 and awaits approval from regulatory and competition authorities, with Carrefour holding a minority stake.