BLIK Goes International With VIAMO Acquisition

Polish Payment Standard (PPS), the operator of Poland’s popular mobile payment solution BLIK is set to acquire the Slovakian mobile transaction service provider VIAMO, marking an important international expansion for the Polish firm.

As quoted on the BLIK company website, Dariusz Mazurkiewicz, President of PSP made the following comments:

“BLIK is widely known as a comprehensive payment system on the Polish market. Today, this solution is actively used by over 11.3 million customers and this number is growing with each subsequent quarter. We have gained enormous knowledge, which we want to use also for development outside our country.

“Already two years ago, we started establishing partnerships with global payment service providers. The acquisition of the Slovak company VIAMO is another important step for us, which will strengthen our position in the region. We see a huge potential of this market, especially in the context of our action plans throughout the euro area.”

In an interview with PYMNTS last year, Mazurkiewicz highlighted BLIK’s widespread adoption in Poland, where 70% to 80% of all Polish eCommerce payment volumes are processed through the company’s system.

“We’ve convinced the whole society and mobile banking users to start using BLIK as the most secure [and] fastest way of paying online with mobile banking apps,” he said.

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On the recent acquisition news, Lubo Požgay, CEO, VIAMO, said, “we are constantly developing and establishing partnerships that attract more and more users to our service. Already, nearly 300,000 people use our applications and services.

“However, we want to achieve more and increase the scale of our operations. Therefore, we have no doubts that BLIK’s unique and successful competences, especially in the field of e-commerce, as well as capital support, will significantly make VIAMO’s offer on the Slovak market much more attractive and will allow for expansion in other euro area countries,” per the BLIK website.

The agreement for the purchase of VIAMO shares, which was signed in Warsaw on August 11, will enter into force once the approval of the central bank of Slovakia has been granted. The parties did not disclose the value of the transaction.