Yesterday Qiwi, a major, NASDAQ-listed Russian payment operator, announced the full acquisition of SAER, a holding company that owns the Contact money transfer system and the Rapida payment processing system. Under the terms of the agreement, QIWI will issue 5,593,041 class B shares to the current owner, Russian financial group Otkritie.
Based on Qiwi’s current stock price on the NASDAQ, the value these shares would amount to some $167 million, the company’s press service told East-West Digital News. The closing is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. It is expected to occur in two instalments by mid-September 2015.
Qiwi and Otkritie also announced their intention “enter into a cooperation agreement for the introduction of new products and services in the financial services market vertical,” but Qiwi’s press service could not elaborate on the matter.
Qiwi expects that the acquisition of Contact and Rapida will “contribute between 15% and 20% in annualized terms to both QIWI’s adjusted net revenue and adjusted net profit in 2015.”
“With this acquisition, not only are we becoming a significant player in the money remittance market, but we are also becoming a strategic partner of one of the largest Russian financial institutions, Otkritie. We view this partnership as mutually beneficial and expect it to contribute to strengthening our position in the financial services market vertical,” stated Qiwi CEO Sergey Solonin.
Initially a network of cash collection machines, through which Russians pay for virtually everything from mobile phone bills, to online purchases, to fines, QIWI is now a multichannel payment operator working in close partnership with Visa. As of Q1 2015, it had deployed over 177,000 cash-in kiosks and terminals, and more than 17 million virtual wallets. Qiwi enabled merchants to accept over 50 billion rubles (approximately $1 billion) of cash and electronic payments monthly from over 70 million consumers.
Otkritie Financial Group is a full-service financial group providing retail, corporate and institutional clients with a variety of banking, investment and insurance services. The group, whose total assets exceed 4 trillion rubles (approximately $80 billion), employs more than 22,000 people serving 4 million individuals and 186,000 legal entities.
Source: Qiwi
