Insights

Milan - August 2, 2022 - TAS SpA, leader in Italy in the supply of software and services for banking and financial applications, mother company of a group also present in Europe and America (hereinafter "TAS Group"), announces the acquisition today by its subsidiary Global Payments S.p.A. of the entire share capital of Krisopea Srl (hereinafter "Krisopea"), a technological and business consulting company in the field of payment systems, founded in 2001 in Milan. The entry into the Group comes a few days after the acquisition of ASTRO IT, announced on July 26, demonstrating the acceleration in non-organic growth driven by Rivean Capital, the Private Equity Fund that became TAS Group’ s majority shareholder in early 2022. Krisopea boasts twenty years of expertise in supporting major Italian Fintech clients on topics like Open Banking and PSD2, Digital Banking, Multichannel and Digital Transformation, all core themes of TAS Group’s value proposition and therefore a precious asset to enhance the productive and innovative capacity of its project teams. “With Krisopea we share SW development methodology, customer centric culture, customer base, attention to human capital and much more. - comments Valentino Bravi, CEO at TAS Group, - I am sure that the synergy between our two companies will allow us to further improve our offering and our customer relationships. I have always been a Made-in-Italy advocate also in the ICT field, and this acquisition further confirms this belief". “Krisopea is an important step towards the evolution of our group as a center of excellence for the development and innovation of payment solutions and services. The growth path we are pursuing involves the acquisition of complementary companies to TAS, and Krisopea perfectly reflects this characteristic” commented Fabio Bravi, Head of M&A, Special Projects and Corporate Developments. "Entering TAS Group, a leading group in the Fintech sector, is for Krisopea the result of a twenty-year path of constant growth and a source of pride for me. A prestigious goal, achieved thanks to the commitment and professionalism of all our employees and collaborators. I want to thank Valentino and Fabio Bravi for the trust placed in our company, with the shared goal of bringing greater value to the group and to our customers. " - declares Flavio Suigo, CEO and Founder of Krisopea. TAS Group was assisted in the transaction by KPMG as financial advisor and by Lexia Avvocati for the legal aspects. Download the press release

Milan — July 28, 2022 — TAS S.p.A. (hereinafter “TAS”), a leading company in the supply of software and services for banking and financial applications, in Europe and the Americas, hired Andrew Quartermaine as Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of TAS International Business. Andrew brings with him nearly thirty years of experience in the Payments Industry. He has been involved in successful start-up businesses and has held a number of senior positions in large multinational corporations, including NCR, First Data Corporation and more recently ACI where Andrew, in the past 7 years, held the role of Director Merchant Retail Europe and Vice President Customer Success. Andrew’s specific expertise in P&L management, customer relationship management and new market entry strategy makes him a perfect fit for TAS’ ambitions to boost its growth in the International Market, leveraging a best in class payments platform. The recent change of governance driven by Rivean Capital Private Equity Fund who acquired TAS Group in Q1 this year further aligns to the growth strategy of TAS. Valentino Bravi, CEO of TAS, said “We’re very excited to have Andrew on board. Through his strong track record in multiple sectors across multiple geographies and EU regions, I am sure he will inspire and empower our growing international team.” Andrew Quartermaine added “I am very pleased to be joining TAS and am excited by the challenge of expanding the business internationally. I believe the solutions TAS has within its portfolio, the partnerships which are in place, the quality of the TAS teams and the support being provided by Rivean Capital will enable the company to capitalize on opportunities which exist”. Download Press Release

Milan — July 26, 2022 — TAS S.p.A. (hereinafter “TAS”), a leading company in Italy in the supply of software and services for banking and financial applications, also present in Europe and America, has today finalized the acquisition of the entire share capital of ASTRO IT S.r.l. (hereinafter “ASTRO IT”), a company specialized in the application management and system integration of software solutions for banking, insurance and large corporates. The relevant experience and know-how held by ASTRO IT in the field of application management, regulatory compliance and process optimization represent a qualitative as well as quantitative enrichment of the production capacity of TAS. “Acquisitions are an important element of the strategic growth plan of TAS, as well as for the strengthening of the skills and for the staffing of teams for the launch of new digital transformation projects and solutions, - comments Fabio Bravi, Head of M&A, special projects and corporate developments of TAS, and digitalization is among the primary objectives of TAS’s target customers.” “Integrating ASTRO IT into the TAS family means consolidating the work done together in recent years. - comments Valentino Bravi, CEO - I take this opportunity to welcome the shareholders and all employees and collaborators of this reality, beginning a new development path together with us”. “After a few years of close collaboration, joining TAS Group makes us proud and gives us a great stimulus to jointly face the new challenges and growing opportunities that market offers” - declares Giuseppe Muzzioli, General Manager of ASTRO IT. The acquisition adds another piece to the consultancy and delivery capabilities of TAS Group in the field of payment services and capital markets. Download the press release

Thanks to the agreement signed with Danish fintech SoftPay, TAS will enable the acquiring of contactless payments from Android mobile devices in Italy. The benefit provided by the SoftPos solution to merchants is simple and immediate: allowing to transform their phones into a ready-to-use payment terminal, without the need for additional certified hardware, thus reducing the heterogeneity and complexity of multi-device management at the point of sale.

The shopping experience is also improved for the buyer, who can complete the payment faster, avoiding long queues at the checkout.

The merchant APP is available on the Google Play Store and can be used in white label mode, or easily integrated with any APP already in use by the merchant.

The solution is certified with Visa and Mastercard, and is also available for mobile wallets - such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay - whose payments are processed in a similar way to standard EMV transactions managed by traditional POS devices. For maximum user security, a specific certified component manages the typing of the PIN on Glass on the Android device, ensuring absolute confidentiality.

The SoftPos solution is offered by TAS to banking operators and their processors as a service in Cloud; in this way the impact on the Service Provider is minimal, avoiding to disrupt the infrastructures already in use to manage the POS channel.

The innovative solution created by TAS for the Tuscany Region over 10 years ago still represents today a best in class platform for accessing debt positions and collecting payments in compliance with the public national pagoPA circuit. This is proved by other important regional administrations such as Lazio, Umbria and Sardinia, having chosen to reuse the same core platform, adapted by TAS to their specific requirements. Similar solutions for pagoPA payments have been provided by TAS through partnerships also to central Public Administrations such as the Italian Medicines Agency, the Ministry of Health and InfoCamere. Based on the PayTAS proprietary framework, the platform has been built to meet the multiple needs of public administrations and any creditor who provides services of public interest, in the provision of end2end collection and payment services, with a technical and operational approach aimed at facilitating the participation of as many administrations as possible into the pagoPA ecosystem. IRIS, the solution created for the Tuscany Region, more specifically addresses and optimizes the following tasks:

• administrative and technical enrollment of public bodies belonging to the Tuscany territory
• standardization of interfaces and integration with the national IO App system, with full reconciliation of receipts
• simplification of the payment experience of the users (citizens and businesses)
• integration with regional apps
• integration with the centralized booking system for public healthcare services (CUP) and the Pharmacies of the Tuscan Health Service.

Particular attention was paid to the multi-channel freamework, based on a rich catalog of APIs covering the most innovative mobile acceptance devices as well as the more traditional ones. The positive track record and the close synergistic collaboration experienced by Tuscany Region with TAS during the last decade triggered the renewed appointment for the maintenance agreement dedicated to the evolution of IRIS for the next years to come. TAS is a leading provider in the digital payments platforms and services for the financial sector, in particular for the latest trends such as Open Banking, PSD2, Instant Payments and Request2Pay. TAS solutions for the B2G space are offered on premises or in cloud, thus allowing minimum in-house and up-front costs. Market operators can design their payment services leveraging a set of standardized and simplified interfaces, including those that integrate Italian Municipalities, which allows for a significant acceleration in public administrations onboarding. The platform customized for PSPs enables the measurement and matching of high service performance levels and continuous process monitoring, and satisfies all integration scenarios with the domestic pagoPA scheme in a scalable and stable way despite the huge and constantly increasing number of payment transactions generated by key sectors such as multi-utilities and public healthcare companies.

Cyber attacks suffered by companies and institutions of any industry, including the Finance sector, are constantly intensifying. Statistics show a clear unstoppable increase in both the volumes and the severity of events caused by more and more sophisticated and organized actors. No doubt that cyber- ​​and data-protection are today a top priority for all financial ecosystem companies. In this context, TAS has recently signed two important agreements, the first at Group level with Synopsys and the second with Acronis through the French subsidiary TAS France. The adoption by TAS’ Software Factory of the flagship suite of Synopsys, a leading American company in Application Security Testing, will guarantee the development of secure code using advanced BSIMM (Building Software In Maturity Model) tools and methodologies, further increasing the security of the software provided to our customers. On the other hand, the hosting and cloud computing services delivered by TAS France combined with the management and information security solutions of Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, will offer an undeniable added value to the customers served by the Sophia Antipolis Data Center: improved customer experience enhanced with greater security and cyber resilience. Find out more about the TAS & Synopsys agreement  Learn more about the TAS Cloud Services & Acronis agreement 

Milan, June 23^rd 2022 - Given the unstoppable increase in cybersecurity risks, no organization can avoid constantly investing in the security of its systems to protect itself and its customers. Hence, it is increasingly important for software developers to have products and services that analyse and test the robustness of applications against fraud attacks. This is even more true for companies like TAS, whose core business is linked to the development of mission critical solutions for customers in the Finance world, a sector where security is a top priority, considering the potential implications of vulnerability on the stability of the entire payments ecosystem. In fact, Tas is one of the few Fintech providers admitted to the Italian CERTFin community, which brings together banks and technology suppliers relevant to the Payment Systems, in order to increase the IT risk management capacity of financial operators and the cyber resilience of the Italian financial system as a whole. To further improve the security of its applications, TAS has recently signed an agreement for the entire Group with Synopsys, a global company headquartered in the United States, which has worked in recent years on the expansion of their suite of Application Security Testing tools with a great response from the market, proving the high quality of their solutions. “According to Gartner, by 2025, 70% of cyber-attacks will come from known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that could have been fixed earlier. At TAS, due to the nature of our business, we are even more attentive than others to these issues and we like to “play ahead” whenever possible. For this reason, we have decided to adopt the complete suite of Synopsys solutions. Synopsys is the undisputed world leader in all areas concerning the secure development of the code, so we are convinced that we have made the right choice for us, but above all, to be able to offer a really important added value to all our customers” – comments Fabrizio Brintazzoli, Cybersecurity Officer of TAS. “Synopsys specializes in Application Security. Always alongside our Partners, we offer advanced BSIMM (Building Software In Maturity Model) tools and methodologies in the development of secure code. Synopsys invests every year in R&D and acquisitions in order to expand the product portfolio by guaranteeing complete SDLC solutions. We are honoured by the agreement signed with TAS which will offer its customers software developed with a safe methodological approach” - adds Emanuele Burali d'Arezzo, Regional Sales Manager at Synopsys Software Integrity Group. The adoption of Synopsys solutions by TAS Software Factory has already begun in Italy and it will be extended in the coming months to the other European TAS Group branches. Download the press release

The mandatory tender offer promoted by Solidus BidCo S.p.A., a company controlled by Rivean Capital Fund (formerly Gilde Buy Out Fund), ended on 11 May 2022 with the revocation on the same date of the listing of TAS’s ordinary shares on Euronext Milan (so-called delisting). Upon completion of the aforementioned process, Rivean Capital confirms itself as the (indirect) majority shareholder in the share capital of TAS S.p.A.. The new phase of governance of the Group is now opening, again led by the Chief Executive Officer Valentino Bravi, who indirectly maintained a minority stake in the company's share capital. Stay tuned!  

Interest is growing in the Aquarius User Group initiative, whose last meeting was held on April 20 in Milan, with over 70 participants including representatives of the major financial institutions and service centers committed to meeting the Eurosystem deadlines.

The working group, coordinated by TAS in collaboration with Accenture and KPMG, took stock of the progress of the ECMS project, illustrating the new documentation being released by the ECB and all remaining regulatory milestones impacting on the banking community. A live demo of TAS Aquarius ECMS component was presented, focusing on the monitoring and management fuctionalities designed around the Eurosystem's new unified Collateral Management system.  On top of collecting feedback from the first 10 clients that have adopted the new Aquarius module, the meeting was a valuable opportunity to present and discuss additional value-added features that will be provided by Aquarius in order to offer, beyond the full compliance with the new ECMS requirements, also several scalable functions managing further forms of collateral.

An update on the T2-T2S Consolidation project was also part of the meeting agenda, with a deep-dive into the topic of testing, now in its most intense phase, as well as a summary of the upcoming activities defined by the ECB  before the Go Live scheduled for 21 November.