Deconstructing Nexi: Can Europe’s Consolidation Giant Keep Up With Emerging Payment Disruptors?

Or will it have to find a new way to grow...

Nexi S.p.A. is far from a household name outside Europe, yet it now ranks among the continent’s largest digital payments providers, processing nearly €825 billion in merchant transactions across 25-plus countries.

In its home market of Italy, Nexi is practically synonymous with card-based payments, but most international observers still see it as a niche story. Behind the scenes, however, Nexi has quietly stitched together an empire through rapid-fire acquisitions and strategic bank partnerships.

The firm’s top-line numbers look impressive: revenues tripled to €3.36 billion by 2023, and EBITDA margins hit 52%. But if you dig deeper, you’ll see mounting tension between Nexi’s ambition to become a fully integrated “European PayTech” and the sheer complexity of uniting its many acquired platforms under one roof.

In this edition of the Payments Strategy Breakdown, I will deconstruct Nexi, their journey, and their Strategy, as they try to remain one of the top European Acquirers.

Let’s dive in…

From Local Champion to Pan-European Aggregator

Nexi began as a spin-off from Italy’s interbank card-processing consortium, operating under names like CartaSi and ICBPI.

In 2017, it rebranded to “Nexi,” aiming to modernize Italy’s heavily cash-based culture. Within two years, the company became the go-to payments partner for many Italian banks, acquiring the merchant-acquiring units of Deutsche Bank Italy, Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), and eventually the massive portfolio of Intesa Sanpaolo.

This locked in the bulk of Italy’s digital payment flows under Nexi’s umbrella and funded its IPO in 2019.

Armed with fresh capital, Nexi soon looked beyond Italy.

It inked an all-stock merger with Nets, the Danish payments group with roots in the Nordics and the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland).

This deal alone expanded Nexi’s footprint into e-commerce gateways and cross-border services.

Not long after, Nexi merged with SIA, an Italian firm known for operating instant payment rails and running the backend for various European card networks.

Combined, these acquisitions gave Nexi a toehold in multiple European markets and made it one of the largest payment processors on the continent.

For payments professionals outside Europe, think of Nexi as the behind-the-scenes operator that banks outsource to, similar to Fiserv or Global Payments in the US.

Unlike consumer-facing platforms such as PayPal or Square, Nexi mostly works in the background, powering the “plumbing” for millions of cards and billions of transactions every year.

Europe’s Regulatory Landscape: PSD2 and the Push for Digital

In hindsight, Nexi’s timing was shrewd.

European regulators had opened the door to competition through PSD2 (the Second Payment Services Directive), forcing traditional banks to share payment and account data with fintechs.

In Italy, a market historically dominated by cash, government incentives to digitize transactions further accelerated the shift. Nexi, already embedded with local banks, seized the chance to become a “national champion,” steering Italy toward contactless, mobile, and online payments.

But once you look across Europe’s fragmented landscape, each country with its own banking relationships and local nuances, you realize that scaling up typically means forging or buying your way into each region.

For Nexi, that spelled a series of M&A plays.

The firm hoped each deal would bring synergy: standardize technology stacks, cross-sell e-commerce solutions, and leverage local bank partnerships in brand-new markets.

The Risk of a “Tech Quilt”

That synergy story has its limits.

Combining SIA’s card rails, Nets’ e-commerce gateways, and multiple bank-owned portfolios is no insignificant undertaking.

Even with a hefty R&D budget, Nexi invests roughly 15% of revenues into technology, the day-to-day work of integrating legacy systems can stifle the speed of new product rollouts.

The challenge is very similar to that of other payment conglomerates such as, Fiserv, Worldline, or Global Payments, that expanded through acquisitions faster than they could unify their platforms.

Merchants today want advanced features like instant settlements, robust data analytics, and frictionless cross-border acceptance.

In many cases, rolling out those capabilities quickly requires a single, modular infrastructure.

If Nexi’s teams are tangled in migrating siloed merchant portfolios, merging tech stacks, and re-aligning compliance standards across multiple jurisdictions, true innovation can get lost in the mix.

Slower Growth, Stiffer Competition

While Nexi’s overall revenue has soared, some business lines are already hitting a ceiling.

Its Digital Banking Solutions segment, a category that covers ATM management, corporate portals, and open banking infrastructure, reports growth in the low single digits.

Merchant Solutions continues to drive the lion’s share of the top line, but even there, growth in certain core markets cooled to the mid-single digits.

At the same time, companies like Adyen and Stripe are pushing the boundaries with cloud-native platforms, minimal legacy baggage, and a culture laser-focused on product iteration. They offer robust APIs, real-time capabilities, and a single codebase that’s easier to upgrade.

Nexi’s scale might be enviable, but it also raises the question of whether being a “consolidator” places it at a disadvantage when it comes to agility, an increasingly vital trait in payments.

Is “Big” Still the Right Strategy?

The logic behind Nexi’s M&A spree was straightforward: bigger volume, broader geographic scope, more resources to invest in R&D, and a robust partner for banks adjusting to open banking.

But “big” can also mean “slow” if the company spends more time unifying acquired brands and less time pioneering new capabilities.

The stakes are high.

If Nexi executes well, fully merging technology stacks and smoothing out product suites, it could become Europe’s definitive “PayTech” for banks and merchants, bridging multiple countries under a single, well-integrated system. That might allow it to stand toe-to-toe with even the most advanced global players.

If, however, Nexi slips into the classic “scale-meets-silos” trap, where each acquisition remains partly disjointed, draining R&D capacity, then the very deals that brought it to prominence could hamper innovation, letting pure-tech rivals rush ahead. In a market craving seamless cross-border e-commerce, real-time settlements, and cutting-edge digital experiences, a slow pivot is a risky bet.

Final Thoughts

Nexi’s story is an example of Europe’s payment evolution: from cash-based traditions and bank-led systems to a pan-European ecosystem seeking real-time speed, open banking, and frictionless commerce.

Through rapid acquisitions, Nexi skyrocketed to the top tier of processors, commanding sizable market share and forging deep ties with banks across multiple markets.

Yet now it faces a crucial test: can all the pieces be truly integrated into a single, nimble platform?

The answer will determine if Nexi becomes a blueprint for strategic consolidation done right, turning legacy rails and newly acquired solutions into a unified future, or a warning that, in payments, relentless dealmaking without enough tech cohesion can be a slippery path.

In the fast-moving world of embedded finance, cross-border expansion, and instant digital experiences, the winners will be those who can innovate at speed.

Nexi has proven it can acquire; now it must prove it can actually deliver, seamlessly, at scale, and before global tech-driven upstarts claim its territory.

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