Worldline

Worldline is a French payments group listed on Euronext Paris, with processing roots going back to Sligos in 1973. Atos floated part of it in 2014 and passed its remaining shares to investors in 2019. Almost everything it sells today came in by purchase: Equens in 2015, SIX Payment Services for about €2.3bn in 2018, and Ingenico for roughly €7.8bn in 2020, which carried the Bambora, Ogone and Global Collect platforms with it. Greek acquiring followed in 2022 with the Eurobank merchant business.

What a merchant buys is card acquiring plus an online gateway, terminals and unattended payment kit, sold across around 27 markets: most of Europe, Türkiye, and offices in China and Singapore for cross-border work. Worldline counts 1.2 million merchants and financial institutions, 48 billion transactions a year and more than 150 payment products, with collection in 140-plus currencies and payout in 25-plus. Local coverage includes iDEAL, Bancontact, TWINT, PostFinance Pay, eps, BLIK, Przelewy24, Multibanco, Dankort, Cartes Bancaires and Wero, and its own account-to-account method, Bank Transfer by Worldline, runs in 14 countries.

Older write-ups need treating with care. The Ingenico terminal brand was sold to Apollo in 2022 and is a separate company again. During 2026 Worldline sold its North American business to Shift4, its Indian activities to BillDesk, New Zealand to Cuscal, its Australian joint venture back to ANZ, and the Mobility & e-Transactional Services unit to Magellan Partners. What is left is European, backed by a capital raise of about €500m in early 2026 in which BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole and Bpifrance took stakes.

Pricing is nearly always quoted. Switzerland is the exception: in-store bundles are advertised at 1.29% + CHF 0.15 with no fixed monthly charge, terminals from CHF 99 outright or CHF 35 a month, and money reaching the merchant within 48 hours. Elsewhere the choice is interchange++ or a blended rate, with indicative scheme-fee schedules published country by country.