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Back in June 2021, Norwegian Vipps, Danish Mobilepay and Finnish Pivo announced that the three mobile wallets would merge.
On Friday, however, the former 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 the consolidation.
Concerned about market concentration
The Commission believes that the merger would have created a market situation in the wallet market in Finland that was far too high. That is because Pivo and Mobilepay have divided the market between them in Finland.
– In Norway, Vipps is by far the largest player and Mobilepay is the same in Denmark, but in Finland there are two major players. The EU was concerned that the merger would result in too high a market concentration, says communications manager at Vipps, Caroline Lunde.
A new formal application has now been submitted to the European Commission, and the companies hope to receive approval before Christmas. Then the work starts to build an organization across Norway, Finland and Denmark. That’s what Vipps writes in a press release.
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– We are now entering with somewhat 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 for us to progress in the approval process, says Lunde.
Will establish itself in several countries
In total, the merged company will have close to 11 million users, 400,000 stores and 900 million annual transactions.
– 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 solution for mobile payments in Finland, says Vipps CEO Rune Garborg in the press release.
In the long term, the aim is also to establish itself in other European countries, and to be able to create a common European mobile wallet, adds Lunde.
Changed shareholding
When the merger was first announced, the banks behind Vipps were to get a 65 percent stake, while Danske Bank and OP Bank were to get stakes of 25 and ten percent respectively.
After OB Bank is now out of the merger, the banks behind Vipps will get a share of 72.2 per cent, while Danske Bank will get a share of 27.8 per cent.
This despite the fact that Mobilepay was launched two years before Vipps, has the most users and that in 2021 it had almost twice the daily transaction amount as Vipps.(Terms)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and/or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases using 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 further terms see here.
