Milan’s Nexi to purchase 80 percent of Sabadell's PayComet for €280 million

Offering credit, debit and pre-paid card services, Milan’s Nexi and Alicante-based Banco de Sabadell have come to an agreement that will see the former purchase 80 percent of the latter’s property PayComet for €280 million in upfront cash.

In so much, Nexi will acquire some 380,000+ merchants and approximately €48 billion of transaction volumes as of December 2022. Post-acquisition, the merchant acquiring business is expected to generate an EBITDA of around €30 million based on 2023 figures, resulting in an implied EV/EBITDA 2023E of ~11.5x.

“With this partnership, we enter Spain from a strong position, a market that we have always considered highly attractive for digital payments with great potential for further profitable and sustainable long-term growth, quite similar to Italy,” commented Nexi CEO Paolo Bertoluzzo.

Sabadell, the second-largest merchant acquirer in Spain, will become the exclusive distributor for Nexi solutions across Spain, leveraging approximately 1,200 branches.

PayComet (which began life as PAYTPV) was founded in 2010 by Diego Marcos who remains the company’s CTO to this day. The startup was acquired by Banco Sabadell’s digital ventures hub InnoCells in 2018 for an undisclosed sum.