Brisbane-based EML Payments acquires Kildare-based open bank Nuapay

Kildare, Ireland-based Sentenial and its open banking brand Nuapay have been acquired by Brisbane’s EML Payments for an upfront fee of €70 million, with an additional earn-out component of up to €40 million.

With this acquisition, the combined group will hold in excess of $90 billion AUD in Gross Debit Volume. The deal is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to be finalised by the close of this fnancial year.

Sentenial is a cloud-based payments company that is connected to 1,750 banks across Europe, and processes over €45 billion in transactions per year. The firm is regulated in both the UK and France, and counts tier-one banks, payment platforms, and major corporates amongst its client base.

Through the acquisition of Sentenial’s open banking arm, Nuapay, EML will now have the capabilities in managed payments across scheme (Mastercard and Visa) and non-scheme (Account-to-Account), as well as both card and non-card payments.

“Nuapay’s mission is to be the best way to pay and get paid. We are proud to have developed a market-leading Account-to-Account and Open Banking payments platform over nearly two decades in business,” comments Sentenial founder and CEO Sean Fitzgerald, “The revolution in payments caused by Open Banking and Real-Time Payments is rapidly building momentum globally, and we are hugely excited by this opportunity to move to a global scale as part of EML. From the moment EML approached us, we’ve been impressed by their vision, ambition and growing ecosystem.”