Insights

The consolidated half-year report of TAS Group, approved yesterday by the Board of Directors, highlights a growth in all financial indicators compared to the same period of the previous year, with double-digit increase (13.9%) in the Gross Operating Margin (EBITDA).

Dario Pardi, President of TAS Group, commented: "We are undoubtedly satisfied with the results obtained in the first half of 2020 which see an increase in all indices, in particular in margins, despite the period being characterized by an unprecedented pandemic and which led to containment world-wide, with important repercussions on the economy. These have been important months for us, marked by the conclusion of the corporate reorganization of Global Payments Spa and TAS International S.A., which led to an optimization of skills and an enhancement of assets for the domestic and international market. In addition, we have completed important transactions that will allow us to grow further in the future, particularly internationally. In fact, in June we completed the acquisition of Infraxis AG, a reference reality in the digital payments sector, in the Swiss and German markets, laying the foundations for consolidating our presence in the European market ".

"TAS Group - added Valentino Bravi, CEO of the Group - will continue focusing on technological innovation as the foundation of its business strategy, after an absolutely satisfactory first half. Although the future global economic outlook is uncertain, given the current crisis generated by the pandemic, we can look to the coming months with optimism, also thanks to the boost that digital payments are having, particularly in our home market. We therefore continue our commitment to complete software development projects with the usual determination, focusing investments on innovation and working to confirm our leadership as a company of Italian excellence recognized abroad ".

TAS recently contributed to ESMA’s (European Securities and Markets Authority) regulator consultations on Outsourcing to Cloud Service Providers, offering valuable recommendations on key requirements for financial market participants. The contributions were made as part of ESMA’s three-month public consultation phase on their June publication and will shortly be made available on the Regulator’s website. At TAS we continuously monitor regulatory guidelines and industry best practices to improve our solution delivery capabilities, both for SaaS and Cloud delivery models. We are therefore proud to state that we fully comply with ESMA’s guidelines in all our outsourcing offerings. Below are just a few of our most popular outsourcing solutions for the financial market community: PAG€ - the most convenient way to connect to ESMIG TAS SWIFT Service Bureau – beyond pure network access TAS 3DS Access Control Server (ACS) – secure buyer authentication for e- & m-commerce Hosting/Housing/Cloud @ TAS France (learn more) With more than 35 years of experience in software solutions for e-money, payments and financial markets and playing an active role in the Eurosystem Consolidation Project, we believe we have a responsibility to share our expertise and views with the European Financial Community and are always happy to do so. Working with TAS as your outsourcer means being guaranteed that we have the right focus on the business, as well as the full knowledge and control on the underlining application developed by TAS digital sw factory experts inhouse.

Geneva and Milan, September 14, 2020 - Information Technology and Solutions and Services (ITSS), a global banking software integrator, and TAS Group (TAS), a global provider of digital payments software solutions, are pleased to announce their new strategic alliance aimed at accelerating innovation in Financial Services. Through this partnership, ITSS together with TAS, both Temenos partners, will strengthen their services and be able to offer best-in-class solutions in the area of Payments, Card Management Services and Intraday Liquidity management to Temenos T24 Transact core banking customers worldwide. TAS’s state-of-the-art software allows banks, both incumbents and digital-first challengers, to deliver innovative payments products with a short time-to-market, integrating with and leveraging the latest technologies and making use of rich-data APIs to offer end users a superior customer experience. For over 35 years, TAS, through its deep domain expertise and advanced technology has brought its flexible, secure and high-performance solutions to financial operators around the world. Now, supported through this synergistic partnership, T24 Transact customers can leverage CARD 3.0 IE, a flexible, modular and scalable card issuing, acquiring and processing platform that can be easily and quickly deployed either on-premise or on the cloud. Since 2001, ITSS has been committed to delivering banking technology services and solutions to banks and financial institutions worldwide. As a Temenos partner, it has supported over 220 Temenos clients as a system integrator for all Temenos products including T24 Transact, FCM, Islamic banking, TAP, Multifonds, Inclusive banking and Infinity. ITSS’ global delivery capability and extended service offering enables it to establish long-term partnerships with its clients. Umberto Pardi, Executive Vice President of International Channel Sales, TAS said: “We are delighted to cooperate with fellow Temenos partner, ITSS, a leading system integrator with a global reach and excellent reputation, to bring powerful payments solutions through an extensive library of APIs integrated into T24 Transact core banking to clients in a matter of weeks. Together we enable banks to elevate their market agility in an ever-changing payment ecosystem”. Patrick Jaccoud, CEO, ITSS Global said “We are excited to embark on this mutually beneficial partnership with TAS to offer sophisticated payments solutions to our clients from a renowned partner. As we join forces to strengthen and expand our service delivery to our T24 Transact clients, we are confident that we will accelerate business growth for our clients to remain competitive”.

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Milan, 20 July 2020 - TAS S.p.A. (hereinafter the "Company" or "TAS"), leader in Italy in the supply of software and services for banking and financial applications, also present in Europe and America, announces that it has signed an agreement with Otik to add additional competence to the TAS organisation. Otik Srl is an ICT company specializing in software product design and consultancy in the Finance and Banking sector.

The operation is aimed at further strengthening TAS Group’s leadership in the Italian and European banking market in the area of Liquidity & Collateral Management.

To date, almost 20 financial institutions and interbank service centers have chosen the TAS Aquarius solution for the migration to the new consolidated Target2 /T2–Securities platform.

The initiative undertaken by TAS is also aimed at tackling the launch of the ECMS (European Collateral Management System), the last step among the Eurosystem's Consolidated Target Services, on which TAS is already carrying out analyzes and developments, working in a collaborative manner through the Aquarius User Group in partnership with KPMG and Accenture.

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Milan, Italy, 30 June 2020 - TAS S.p.A. (hereinafter the "Company" or "TAS"), leader in Italy in the supply of software and services for banking and financial applications, also present in Europe and America, announces that today the wholly-owned subsidiary under Swiss law, TAS International SA, in execution of the contract signed on June 8, 2020, has completed the acquisition of 100% of the share capital of the Swiss company Infraxis AG, which in turn holds the entire share capital of the British company Infraxis Ltd (UK).

TAS Group thus expands its presence in Switzerland and Germany, but especially in Great Britain where it is currently not present, strengthening the foundations for further growth in the European market. Thanks to the synergies that will be created on the software platforms with the Infraxis solutions, TAS plans to soon launch a new cloud based and full microservices proposal managing all types payments through a unique platform, to be once again among the promoters in terms of innovation and among the first to guide the transition from e-money to digital payments not only in Italy, but also in the other markets in which it operates, with the ambition to become a leading company also at international level.

With the conclusion of this operation, which determines the integration between two highly competitive and complementary businesses, new horizons for TAS Group beckon. In addition to a significant increase in volumes, an enrichment in human capital, thanks to the professional figures who will join and strengthen the area of research and development, which is essential to guarantee innovative and best of breed solutions to its customers.

The President of TAS Group, Dario Pardi summarized it as follows: “The conclusion of this operation confirms our inorganic growth strategy which accompanies the organic one endorsed by the recently approved Industrial Plan. With this step TAS strengthens its market position in Europe that from today represents for us an international outpost in the world of payments. This partnership and the coming ones under evaluation, are significant milestones aimed at increasing the value of the company to support those who believe and invest with us.”

This is echoed by Valentino Bravi, CEO of TAS Group: “Today TAS is a consolidated reality completely focused on renewal. We are pursuing the goal of an important growth, leveraging our areas of excellence, supported by a continuous search for innovative solutions, by an organic development of our Group and by acquisitions of complementary businesses already consolidated on the market, such as Infraxis. We firmly believe that the synergies in the development of new solutions and the cross selling opportunities, which we will explore in the coming months, will be an important accelerator in achieving the challenging objectives that we have set ourselves."

Manfred Thomi, CEO of Infraxis, comments: “TAS has chosen us and we have chosen TAS. We are ready for the market, we have always been, but today we have, thanks to the union between our already competitive businesses, many more resources on which to rely to offer our customers more and more expertise and innovative solutions".

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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

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.”

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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 

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