Ingenico is a France-based company, whose business is to provide the technology involved in secure electronic transactions. Its traditional business is based on the manufacture of point of sale payment terminals, but it also includes complete payment software and related services, also software for merchants.
History
Ingenico was founded in France by Jean-Jacques Poutrel and Michel Malhouitre in 1980. It is headquartered in Paris. In 2008, after the merging with The Ingenium Group, Ingenico closed its R&D centre in Barcelona. This centre developed Ingenico's family of EFTPOS. In 2008, Ingenico acquired 55% of Fujian Landi, a Chinese EFTPOS vendor. In 2009, Ingenico partnered with its two largest competitors, Hypercom and VeriFone, to found the Secure POS Vendor Alliance, a non-profit organization whose goal is to increase awareness of and improve payment industry security. Ingenico acquired German payment processor Easycash in 2009 for €290 million EUR. In 2011, Ingenico integrated Pennies, the electronic charity box, into one of their mobile Chip and PIN payment terminals, allowing retailers to use the Pennies technology so their customers can add a micro-donation to their bill when paying by card. In July 2017, Ingenico bought Swedish payments group Bambora for €1.5bn. This acquisition enables the group to accelerate the development of its Retail division through a direct-to-SMB channel in the Nordic countries and to deploy the successful model of Bambora in new markets. In October 2017, Ingenico expanded its direct-to-retail channel in Spain with the acquisition of IECISA Electronic Payment System. In December 2017, Ingenico acquired Airlink to expand its Asian reach. In August 2019, Ingenico Group has partnered with IKEA to facilitate digital payments on the retailer's ecommerce platform in India.
Ogone
Ogone was a Belgium-based online payment service provider and payment risk management company that has been part of Ingenico since 2013. After the acquisition, Ingenico renamed the business Ingenico Payment Services. Ogone managed and secured online payments for card-not-present transactions and provided fraud prevention services. Ogone, was connected through certified links with more than 200 banks and acquirers and provided international, alternative and local payment methods in over 80 countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and in 2014 had 77,000 clients. The company was headquartered in Belgium and had operations in India and regional offices in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, UK, United Arab Emirates and the US. Ogone was founded as Abssys Consulting in 1996 by Harold Mechelynck and Thierry Pierson. In 2003 Ogone was Europe's first payment service provider to develop, integrate and certify a "3-D secure MPI module", enabling remote payment. In May 2010 the company received an undisclosed majority investment from US-based growth equity firm Summit Partners. The purchase of EBS in September 2011, at the time the second largest payment provider in India after CC-Avenues, was Ogone's first acquisition and its first move outside the European market. With the addition of the EBS customer-base, Ogone became one of the world's "largest" payment services. On 29 January 2013, Ingenico announced an agreement for the acquisition of Ogone. A share purchase agreement for the acquisition was executed two months later for 360 million euro.
Ingenico Payment Services
On 4 June 2014 Ogone announced that Ogone was becoming Ingenico Payment Services, the Ingenico Group's flagship brand for digital payment services. All activities were to be structured around three major brands: Ingenico Smart Terminals, Ingenico Mobile Solutions and Ingenico Payment Services. Ingenico Payment Services groups the activities of acquisitions made by Ingenico over the past years, including Ogone, TUNZ, easycash, easycash Loyalty Solutions and AXIS.
