EML acquires Sentenial and enters the Open Banking market in Europe

By Joy Dumasia

EML Payments much anticipated acquisition of Sentenial Limited and its wholly owned subsidiaries; L’Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). EML is acquiring Sentenial, including its open banking product suite, Nuapay, for an upfront enterprise value of €70 million, plus an earn-out component of up to €40 million.

The acquisition’s finalisation repositions EML as a global leader in open banking and card payments and one of the largest FinTech enablers. Sentenial’s open banking and account-2-account brand Nuapay will complement EML’s digital product suite starting in Europe and the United Kingdom. Together, EML Nuapay will forge a frictionless payments revolution leveraging the open banking movement, empowering a better experience for end-users and better economics for clients.

The EML product platform provides tailored payment solutions across a wide range of industry verticals. With the introduction of the Nuapay product suite, clients can take full advantage of the latest in payments innovation.

Tom Cregan, Managing Director & Group CEO at EML, said: “We’ve been working with the Sentenial team for some months now on a go-to-market strategy encompassing sales, marketing, product and technology, and we’ll showcase all at our upcoming EMLCON4 event in November. Strategically, this is an important acquisition for us, continuing our transition over the last ten years from a gift card company to a General Purpose Reloadable company, and now extending that again to include digital payments, open banking and account-2-account payments, giving us a unique set of capabilities in the European market. We’re just as excited about welcoming the whole team from Sentenial into the EML family, and once travel opens up, getting over to meet them all in person.”

Recently, IBS Intelligence reported that EML Payments and CoinJar, Australia’s longest-running cryptocurrency exchange, are taking crypto into the mainstream with CoinJar Card. The collaboration will simplify cardholders to pay using cryptocurrency via a digital or physical card wherever Mastercard is accepted.