PagoNxt reported very positive sales in H1 2022 as its core markets of Spain and Latin America continued to recover strongly from the pandemic.
Unlike some banks, Santander regards payments as strategic and formed PagoNxt to consolidate all its merchant payment assets in one ring-fenced organisation. The merchant facing brand is GetNet.
Rather than build the technology to link its national assets and attract cross-border merchants, PagoNxt bought Wirecard’s platform from the administrators in 2020. It’s too early to know whether this bet has paid off – platform migration is a notoriously tricky business – but the purchase does allow PagoNxt to win at buzzord bingo. Who could resist its new “global, cloud-native, data-driven… connected, retail-time, flexible and highly scalable technology platform that is fully cloud and API-based…”
Back to the H1 results and global payment volume was up 35% to €74.6bn. European volume was up 53%, Mexico by 38% and Brazil by 23%. The strong European performance was driven by “exposure to high growth verticals in Spain” which very probably means the rebounding tourist market. PagoNxt is now present in nine European markets (including the UK where Santander’s payment presence has always been weak) and is investing in “targeting specialised industries including airlines and mobility.”
Total merchant count grew 5% year on year to 1.27m including 20,000 selling cross-border. Payment volume per merchant grew 29% in the half year to an annualised €118,000. European merchant count increased 15%.
Revenue was up a very healthy 87% to €398m with the take rate rising 16bps to 0.53%. Expense grew just 43% to €447m which resulted in narrowing losses to €50m from €108 in H1 2021.
