Santander takes Getnet Brazil public
It’s around a year since Santander first publicly stated that it was planning to take Getnet Brazil public, its Brazilian merchant acquiring company. Getnet Brazil’s time has come and it will begin trading on Sao Paulo’s B3 stock exchange from October 18, and then on the Nasdaq from October 22.
Arguably the jewel in the crown of Santander’s digital-first brand PagoNxt, Getnet Brazil is a leading player in the growing Brazilian payments market.
The announcement follows increasing momentum from Getnet, which has grown from a 7% Brazilian market share in 2014 when it was first acquired by Santander to around 16% in H1 2021. It has also grown its active client base to 891,000 merchants in 2020 – a CAGR of 21% from 2014.
Despite its dip in 2020, the merchant acquirer also saw benefits from the climb in ecommerce, achieving 200% growth in online transactions during the Black Friday sales period and gaining a 30% ecommerce market share during that time. It is expected that ecommerce will continue to be a key growth driver for Getnet, although it is also seeing continued growth in its client and point-of-sale base.
Since its acquisition, Getnet has expanded beyond Brazil, first to other parts of Latin America, and later to Europe. And while these parts of the business will not be part of the public offering, Getnet Brazil will benefit from integrations with its overseas counterparts, particularly the European business, which was buoyed by the acquisition of Wirecard assets in 2020.
Getnet will continue to seek growth by leveraging trends across financial inclusion, digitisation, technological innovation and income growth within Brazil. It also plans to add additional capabilities across instant payments and open banking. And how Getnet will be valued will be fascinating, especially with two of the highest valued payments companies around – EBANX and dLocal – both having Latin American roots.
How is Getnet competing with other ecommerce players?
