Insights

Milan, 26 June 2020 - TAS Group completes its internal reorganization aimed at optimizing skills and leveraging the assets of the Group, perfecting the strategic direction for Global Payments SpA and TAS International SA, the two companies created at the beginning of the year to target the Italian and international payments markets respectively.

The Parent Company, TAS SpA, will entrust the coordination of all production activities for the domestic market to Massimiliano Quattrocchi, at TAS Group since 2008 and already head of Global Payments. All commercial development and management activities in Italy will be led by Raffaele Monsorno Monaco, who will also have responsibility for strategic partner management. TAS SpA will continue to be responsible for the provision of administrative and financial services for all Group companies.

Lastly, the position and strategic orientation of the Group in the international markets will also be strengthened, not only through the recent acquisition of Infraxis SA, but by calling on Mario Mendia, previously head of TAS Group’s Capital Markets Business Unit and with previous experience in management consulting, to lead the creation of a consultancy structure to support the organic and inorganic growth of the company.

At Group level, a new Global Channel function has been created, entrusted to Umberto Pardi, who recently joined the Parent Company's Board together with Fabio Bravi, the latter to support President Pardi on special M&A projects. The two new Board members will work in synergy with Mario Mendia to achieve the ambitious goals that form part of the business plan recently approved by the Board of Directors. Download the press release

Like us, you may have been watching with interest the developments concerning the new consolidated Target services platform and in particular the calls for an extension to the migration deadline. The big-bang migration is now expected to be moved to 22 November 2022, a year later than scheduled, following requests made to the ECB’s Governing Council by four European banking bodies (EBF, ESBG, EACG and EAPB) to shift the deadline, citing impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic and SWIFT’s decision to delay the ISO 20022 migration for cross-border payments as the main reasons. The decision by the ECB is expected at the end of July. Stay tuned. Follow us to stay updated on further Consolidation developments and on the collaborative path led by TAS in partnership with Accenture and KPMG Get in touch to find out how TAS can support market participants for the ISO20022 migration and the new Consolidated Target services

Milan, June 8th, 2020 – TAS International SA, the wholly-owned subsidiary of TAS S.p.A., has today signed a binding agreement for the acquisition of the Swiss company, Infraxis AG, and its British subsidiary, Infraxis Ltd (UK).

Infraxis is a leading company in the Swiss and German payment markets, where in the latter its PayStorm processing solution currently authorizes payments for approximately 30% of all issued credit cards. PayStorm supports both card and instant payment solutions within a microservice, omni-channel framework, where ultimate flexibility, scalability and reliability are assured for deployments within private and public cloud networks. Infraxis also provides quality assurance and testing solutions based upon its enterprise-wide, on-demand testing solution IQS, which offers simulation and testing for all aspects of payment infrastructure.

With this acquisition, TAS Group increases its market coverage in both Switzerland and Germany, where it is already present within the Capital Markets sector. TAS will now offer agile processing solutions across all verticals of the payment market, increasing its offerings within existing countries of operation, such as its home market Italy, and empowering its expansion internationally.

The integration of the two companies is expected to result in significant growth for the combined business, primarily due to an increase in turnover at an international level. Significant synergies are envisaged linked to both cross-selling opportunities and platform rationalization in the areas of card program management, credit, debit and fuel card issuance, mobile payments and fuel payment processing.

President Dario Pardi commented: "This acquisition forms part of the strategy laid out in the 2020-22 Business Plan, approved in March, where international expansion is one of the fundamental growth parameters. The acquisition of Infraxis is certainly an important step for TAS Group considering that with the new skills and solutions acquired, TAS will now play a primary role in the digital payments sector at a European level. The confident investment in the capital of TAS International by the current shareholders of Infraxis further confirms the validity of the business plan, and guarantees a combined contribution towards a successful and fruitful Business Integration".

CEO Valentino Bravi added: “We are now entering the concrete phase of the new TAS following the complete financial restructuring and the strengthening of our organisation. TAS is now a completely transformed business, capable of seizing every opportunity that our market offers. The acquisition of Infraxis represents a continuation of our rapid progress and it enriches us with new solutions in the world of Digital Payments, with unique specificities such as the one dedicated to the Fuel Card sector. Furthermore, it allows us to expand our presence in countries with high payment digitization rates, such as Switzerland and Germany. We view this acquisition as being the strategic starting point for further international momentum".

Manfred Thomi, CEO of Infraxis concluded: “The bringing together of Infraxis and TAS marks the start of the next exciting chapter for us. We at Infraxis are looking forward to offering our customers the benefits of a wider combined set of complementary payment solutions, which are backed up by a strong corporation with an international outlook. We are now perfectly positioned to better serve existing customers and to expand the TAS business internationally.”

Read the entire Press Release in the Investor section

TAS Group suppors the NGO "Rise Against Hunger" since 2014 sharing its core value: an upcoming world without hunger is possible. This belief is also strengthened by the UN being enclosed into the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). TAS Group employees meet every January for a big charity reunion: collecting and crafting high nutritional meals to be donated to schools in remote African villages. Ensuring at least a daily high nutritive meal is of a fundamental importance to eradicate both child labor and hunger: poor families won't be obliged to carry their children at work letting them go to school instead. We are really pleased to know that although the Covid19 crisis is hindering transport and communication, the food donated by TAS Group reached the Africa soil where the Feed The Hungry UK volunteers are distributing it to the children of the The Joseph Foundation Zimbabwe Learn more about Rise Against Hunger 

The ECMS (Eurosystem Collateral Management System), whose go-live is scheduled for November 2022, will complete the new consolidated structure of the Eurosystem's market infrastructures, aimed at facilitating efficient liquidity and collateral management, and contributing to the realization of the so-called Capital Markets Union. The new ECMS platform will replace the current 19 IT procedures of the National Central Banks (NCBs) for credit operations (monetary policy refinancing and intraday credit in TARGET2), leaving the responsibility of the individual NCBs to manage contractual and operational relations with counterparties, central custodians and triparty agents. TAS Group has been investing for some time in the evolution of its solution, Aquarius, to offer the market a Liquidity Management System that simplifies and centralizes the operational processes and U2A and A2A interactions of the Treasuries with TARGET Services. On 19th May, TAS Group and its partners, Accenture and KPMG, provided Italian market operators with an orientation framework with which to approach the ECMS Project. Over 140 participants representing 28 private and 3 public operators followed the webinar on ECMS, which was considered very useful also in view of the "virtual" event organized by the Bank of Italy today. Follow us to stay updated on the collaborative path led by TAS Group in partnership  with Accenture and KPMG 

Need some expert help with ECMS or T2/T2S Consolidation? Get in touch 

The Consolidated T2/T2S platform goes live in 2021 and banks have to adapt their access mode to reach the Eurosystem,especially those who currently connect to T2 over the Internet, since this will no longer be allowed. In order to help T2 participants easily comply with the new mandatory ESMIG interface, TAS Group developed PAG€, the first cloud-based, easy and scalable solution that embeds certified NSP connectivity for a smooth and transparent migration. With its user friendly interface, PAG€ allows quick access to the Eurosystem Targ€t Services, enabling both U2A and A2A functionalities, through an agile and secure cloud service that guarantees all the standards required by the new ESMIG interface. What makes PAG€ so powerful is the cutting-edge technology at its core: PAG€ is the result of a combination of TAS leading-edge technology and over 35 years of payments experience in mission-critical market infrastructures, Amazon Web Services (AWS) secure cloud and accredited NSP connectivity. Discover more

PecunPay, Spain’s largest e-money Institution, has decided to further boost its flexibility and agility to support strong business growth by migrating to CARD 3.0 IE, TAS Group’s state-of-the-art card and digital payments management platform. The migration is scheduled to take place before the end of 2020. This is not the first time that PecunPay has put its trust in TAS payments technology, having already adopted its cashless 3.0 platform four years ago. Upgrading to our newest platform will allow the Spanish fintech to manage the entire authorization process in-house, giving it better control over the 750,000 cards it manages and the 2,500 digital and card-present payment terminals it supports at merchants throughout Spain and beyond. PecunPay is licensed by the Bank of Spain to operate throughout the SEPA area, and is already exploring different options to enter the South American market. Discover more about CARD 3.0 IE Visit Pecunpay website

TAS Group has been closely following the developments of the new Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS) as it has been doing for the T2 / T2S Consolidation milestone, and is actively helping banks to prepare, especially in managing collateral and treasury funding.

The ECMS, scheduled to go live in November 2022, will replace the existing individual systems of the 19 national central banks that are currently managing assets used as collateral for Eurosystem credit operations.

Our Aquarius Liquidity Management platform already manages the Central Bank’s  Pooling Account and will guarantee in the future all the features currently being specified for the ECMS, in synergy with the liquidity management and securities settlement functions already covered by the solution.

Follow us to stay updated on the collaborative path led by TAS Group in partnership  with Accenture and KPMG 

Need some expert help with ECMS or T2/T2S Consolidation? Get in touch 

TAS Group’s Payment Intelligence allows you to generate powerful behavioural and predictive models that support business strategies and decision-making processes, and provide you with a continually updated, 360-degree view of your customers. Thanks to the Behaviour Analytics function, which makes use of leading-edge AI &ML technologies developed by Mantica, Payment Intelligence is able to create tailored behavioural models that enrich Profiling Analysis, Pattern Recognition, Segmentation and Scoring of Big data. The solution seamlessly integrates with TAS Group’s card and digital payments platform, CARD 3.0 IE, fully leveraging both cardholder account and transactional data. Discover more