National Bank of Greece (NBG) has agreed to sell 51% of its merchant acquiring business to US-based EVO Payments for 158 million euros ($179m). NBG, one of the top lenders in Greece, is now the 4th top Greek bank to leverage their payments businesses as a source of capital to reduce roughly 30 billion euros in bad loans resulting from the decade-long financial crisis. Earlier this month, Eurobank agreed to sell 80% of its payment processing and acquiring business to Frances’ Worldline.
The deal forms a joint venture that enables NBG to sell EVO’s payment acceptance and processing solutions to its customers while leveraging the infrastructure of the EVO platform. The deal also continues EVO’s expansion into Europe and builds on its current relationship with Deutsche Bank, while NBG’s capital ratio is expected to rise by 0.60% as a result of this transaction.
Overview by Don Apgar, Director, Merchant Services Advisory Practice at Mercator Advisory Group
