Omnichannel payments acceptance has become an essential business service in Germany. Now Deutsche Bank is reversing its previous strategy and getting back into offering payments processing services to its business customers. The German bank will partner with Fiserv and its versatile Clover platform. This will enable Deutsche Bank’s over 800,000 businesses to accept payments both online and in-store.
Clover was bought in 2012 by First Data (since acquired by Fiserv in 2019) and proven to be a big winner for the firm. This deal represents a significant joint venture for the two companies. It will not be surprising to see more trans-Atlantic payment industry deals as each region has already gone through much consolidation. Now international expansion serves as a key strategic opportunity.
The following excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article reports more on the topic:
Deutsche Bank AG wants to get back into the suddenly valuable business of digital payments, nearly a decade after getting out of it. Germany’s largest lender is setting up a joint venture with U.S. payments giant Fiserv to offer customers payments-processing services. The joint venture will allow Deutsche Bank’s business clients to accept payments from customers, both in person and digitally, through Fiserv’s platform called Clover, which reads credit cards, debit cards and mobile wallets, and records orders and inventory.
Deutsche Bank is eager to re-enter the payments market after it sold the business in 2012 to the U.S.-based EVO Payments International LLC. At the time, digital payments were associated with risky areas for banks, since some of the business involved processing transactions from high-risk clients such as gambling and pornography websites.
The payments-processing industry, meantime, has exploded as commerce moves online and payment-card use eclipses cash. The pandemic has further accelerated the shift, including in Germany, a country traditionally big on using cash. Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv has grown strongly as part of that boom. Its market capitalization is almost three times that of the German lender.
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group
