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JPMorgan (JPM) Closes Viva Wallet Deal, Acquires 48.5% Stake

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JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM - Free Report) has completed the deal to acquire a 48.5% ownership stake in Viva Wallet Holdings Software Development S.A. Viva Wallet is a European cloud-based payments fintech company. The deal between JPM and Viva Wallet was announced this January.

Viva Wallet is headquartered in Athens, Greece. It has a proprietary, cloud-based payments platform that can offer a broad array of value-added services to merchants, including tap to device technology, merchant cash advance, bill pay, expense management, virtual debit card issuance, cash disbursement, gift cards and loyalty.

The completion of the transaction reinforces JPM’s commitment to its European payments clients, as well as Greece, and the thriving technology and payments ecosystem in the country.

JPMorgan’s payments business is focused on growing its omni-channel merchant acquiring capabilities offered to European SMBs. The investment in Viva Wallet is a natural fit for JPM’s payments business, which combines corporate treasury services, trade finance, card and merchant services capabilities, to deliver an integrated payments experience to clients across the economy.

In November, JPM announced a plan to open a payments innovation lab in Athens as a research and development home for its payments business.

Our Take

Supported by a solid balance sheet position, JPMorgan has been growing through on-bolt acquisitions, both domestic and international. The bank’s inorganic growth efforts have helped in revenue expansion.

In September, JPMorgan announced a deal to acquire Renovite. In August, it completed the deal to buy Global Shares. In 2021, JPM announced several acquisitions. The notable ones are a 75% stake in Volkswagen's payment arm Volkswagen Financial Services, OpenInvest, a 40% stake in Brazil's C6 Bank, the U.K.-based robo-advisor Netmeg and 55ip.

The deals, along with many others, are expected to keep supporting the bank's plan to diversify revenues, and expand the fee income product suite and consumer bank digitally.

In the past six months, shares of JPMorgan have rallied 13.4% compared with the industry’s rise of 1.9%.

 

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Currently, JPM carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Similar to JPMorgan, several banks have been undertaking acquisitions to diversify revenues and improve market share.

Recently, F.N.B. Corporation (FNB - Free Report) completed the acquisition of Greenville-based UB Bancorp. UB Bancorp's bank subsidiary, Union Bank, merged with FNB's bank subsidiary, First National Bank of Pennsylvania. The acquisition has bolstered FNB’s presence in North Carolina and added “low-cost granular deposits,” which will likely be accretive to its financials amid the present economic backdrop.

Similarly, New York Community Bancorp, Inc. (NYCB - Free Report) closed the acquisition of Flagstar Bancorp, Inc. With this, the combined entity becomes the 24th largest regional bank (based on total assets) in the country.

Per NYCB management, “The merger creates a company with significant scale and capabilities with a more diversified loan portfolio, an improved funding mix, and a much better interest-rate risk profile."


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