Nexi partners with Amazon Italy to support Bancomat Pay payments

MILAN (Reuters) – Italian payments group Nexi said it had signed a partnership agreement with Amazon’s local unit, allowing the e-commerce giant’s customers to shop on its Italian website and pay with a local debit card called BANCOMAT Pay.

Italian ATM operator BANCOMAT, owned by more than 100 Italian banks, is working to expand its online payments service BANCOMAT Pay following an investment from Italian private equity fund FSI, which is now the single largest shareholder.

Currently, Italians use the 34 million BANCOMAT cards in circulation, mainly for ATM withdrawals.

BANCOMAT is the leading provider of debit card payments in Italy, handling around 2 billion payment transactions and withdrawals worth over €160 billion per year.

Filippo Signoretti, director of Nexi Merchant Solutions in Italy, said in a statement that the company fits perfectly into the needs of global players such as Amazon, which need partners with an established position in domestic markets but also operating on an international scale.

The payments sector has grown rapidly in recent years, largely due to a wave of mergers and acquisitions, as companies seek funding to keep up with technological advances while also facing threats from new entrants.

With the prospect of further consolidation in mind, Italian fund FSI has invested in the sector by acquiring a 43% stake in BANCOMAT, as well as developing a retail payments business in partnership with ICCREA and Banco BPM.

Italy’s largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, which owns 18% of BANCOMAT shares and the second largest, UniCredit, with 11% of shares, was the technology partner in the Nexi-Amazon transaction.

In early April, BANCOMAT and Nexi entered into a multi-year agreement to develop a centralized technological infrastructure that would enable BANCOMAT to independently manage the new payments it planned to offer.

(Reporting by Romolo Tosiani; Editing by Valentina Za)