Another chapter in disgraced FinTech venture Wirecard’s collapse has come to an end with Santander buying the German company’s core business in a deal worth roughly €100m.
The deal will see the Spanish bank acquire the European tech enterprise’s payment processing platform and will let about 500 Wirecard employees of join Santander’s staff.
Wirecard administrator Michael Jaffé and Santander jointly announced the deal on Monday evening, with sources telling the Financial Times that the deal would be worth around €100m.
Santander said it plans to leverage the deal to strengthen its payment capabilities and related merchant businesses in Europe.
Wirecard imploded this summer after it was revealed that $2.1bn of its finances were missing. This triggered a chain-reaction that saw the company, which had been hailed as one of the FinTech behemoths of FinTech for years, implode as evidence of an alleged global multi-billion dollar scam came into light.
The months gone by has seen several members of the company’s top brass having had accusations levied at them from both the press and from the authorities. Several members of Wirecard’s previous leadership or are being sought after by the authorities. The arrested executives, including former CEO Markus Braun, deny any wrongdoing.
“We have completed the investor process for Wirecard Core successfully despite the most unfavourable conditions,” said Jaffé. “This is even more remarkable because the whole process has been overshadowed by ever-new scandal reports of past events and initially no liquidity was available to maintain business operations.
“It is particularly pleasing that this result offers employees a positive perspective. Thus, we have achieved our goal of finding the best possible solution for employees and creditors.”
The Santander deal marks the latest in a string of deals where buyers around the world have bought parts of the defunct business. In October, Syncapay announced that it had bought Wirecard North America.
FinTech Paynetics acquired the corporate payout card portfolio of Wirecard UK and Ireland in earlier that month. Similarly, Railsbank signed a term sheet to acquire Wirecard’s UK business in August.
In September, we reported that identity verification company IDnow planned to buy Wirecard Communication Services. At roughly the same time, the news broke that a team from Wirecard’s innovation labs would join Berlin-based FinTech finleap.
Wirecard filing for insolvency and the investigations about the alleged multi-billion fraud has also seen regulators face criticism for how they seemingly failed to supervise Wirecard.
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