Four years ago, I wasn’t convinced Santander could turn a collection of disparate payments assets into a coherent platform but the latest results suggest it has done exactly that. Santander is now a rare European bank making a success of merchant payments, delivering consistent growth and rewarding shareholders with eight successive quarters of profitability.
It’s not been an easy journey. Santander first put its payment assets together in 2020 under the PagoNxt brand and bought Wirecard’s tech platform and Munich operations. The result: an alphabet soup of brands and €170m write-offs.
The business is much clearer now. PagoNxt has been renamed Santander Payment Solutions and consists of three divisions:
- Getnet merchant acquiring, active in Iberia and Latin America
- Getnet Platforms, including A2A and Santander’s issuing processing which services the group’s retail businesses in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Spain and the UK
- Ebury, London-based trade finance specialists which has long been a candidate for IPO
With 1.2m merchant customers, Getnet is the division that most interests readers of Business of Payments. Getnet Payment volume grew an impressive 17% in Q2 to €67bn, and has roughly doubled since 2021.
Getnet offers a single API to connect to its Latin American markets which helps international merchants easily navigate multi-market entry. This was one reason for improved performance in Mexico and Brazil. The latter despite the rapid growth of PIX, which has yet to make a meaningful dent in card acquiring.
Recent product enhancements include “Pay In” for Brazil which allows international merchants to receive payments without establishing a legal entity in the country, DCC in Mexico and white-labelling AEVI’s POS platform (initially in Mexico) which will help secure business from large retailers.
The total number of transactions, including both Getnet acquiring and Getnet platforms, rose to 8.6bn in Q2 26, up 48% year on year, largely driven by increased A2A activity in Brazil. This number may well be associated with PIX.
Santander management has highlighted the importance of scale in driving down unit costs. This strategy is working. Cost per transaction for the half year was 1.6c compared with 2.9c a year ago and 3.6c in 2024.
Figure 1: Santander Payment Solutions Q2 26 results slide
The improved unit economics has begun to flow to the bottom line.
Net revenue grew 19% to €387m, expenses were up 16% to €337m reflecting continued platform investments and net operating income rose 46% to €51m. The operating margin is a very respectable 13%. Cash performance is even better. Santander Payment Solutions generated EBITDA of €123m in Q2 26, a healthy 32% margin.
Santander has proved it can build a profitable merchant acquiring platform. The next challenge is to turn Getnet from a regional champion into a genuinely pan-European proposition. That means expanding beyond its traditional Iberian and Latin American strongholds and strengthening its merchant offering in markets where the bank has a major presence such as the UK and Poland.
