AnaCap acquires 60% stake in Carrefour payments platform

Carrefour is set to offload a majority stake in its digital payments platform Market Pay to AnaCap Financial Partners.

AnaCap, a European financial investment firm, will acquire 60% of retail group’s payments arm in a deal valued at around €300m. 

Market Pay was developed in-house at Carrefour in 2016, expanding in the intervening years to managing 5m cards and more than a billion annual transactions. Bolstered by Carrefour’s retail dominance in Europe, the payments system operates through a unified data platform to offer a multitude of payments solutions for merchants and fintech firms. 

Nassim Cherchali, Partner for M&A at AnaCap, says: “Market Pay is uniquely positioned at the heart of the deep, fragmented and rapidly developing European payments ecosystem, benefiting from the consumer shift from cash to card and offline to online.”

The firm aims to capitalise on the transition from cash to digital payments that has been accelerated by COVID-19, expanding into new markets across Europe and further penetration in ecommerce. 

Market Pay in numbers:

• Established in 2016
• 1.3bn transactions handled each year 
• 5m cards in use 
• 45,000 payment terminals operated 
• €30m in net sales expected in 2020

“Exciting new chapter”

Mazurier says the move presents “an exciting new chapter for the company in 2021 and beyond”, and aims to leverage AnaCap’s expertise and substantial investment portfolio in payments ecosystems to further develop the Market Pay platform. 

The tie-up marks AnaCap’s first venture into the French market, where Carrefour is based, and follows eight similar acquisitions in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) as part of a buy and build strategy centred around heidelpay, a German payments business that was sold to KKR last year. 

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2021, pending approval from regulatory and competition authorities, with Carrefour retaining a minority stake.