EML Payments is adding to its growing portfolio of European payments business, with the acquisition of UK company Sentenial Ltd, which provides real-time payments services to UK and European banks.

EML announced yesterday that it has entered into a binding agreement to acquire 100 per cent of Sentenial and its open banking subsidiary Nuapay for an upfront payment of €70 million plus an earn-out of up to €40 million.

The company said the acquisition will broaden its offer to include non-card, non-scheme payment products. The bulk of the Sentenial business is the provision of direct debit, credit transfers and real-time payments for European banks.

Following the acquisition EML expects to process A$90 billion of payments a year. It reported gross debit volume of $10.2 billion for the six months to December.

EML has been on the takeover trail for the past couple of years. In 2019, it acquired Flex-e-Card Ltd – a gift cards business that trades as flex-e-card and flex-e-vouchers.

In the same year, it acquired the 25.1 per cent of Irish payment card company PerfectCard DAC it did not already own.

Last year, it acquired European payments company Prepaid Financial Services (Ireland) Ltd, a provider of white label payments and banking-as-a-service technology. The PFS deal made it one of the world’s leading prepaid payments providers.

The company operates in 28 countries. Its business segments include gift and incentive cards, general purpose reloadable cards and virtual account numbers. The biggest business is the general purpose reloadable segment, which accounted for 57.1 per cent of revenue in the December half.