Euronet Worldwide
Euronet Worldwide is an American-headquartered worldwide provider of electronic payment services with headquarters in Leawood, Kansas. It offers automated teller machines, point of sale services, credit/debit card services, currency exchange and other electronic financial services and payments software. Among others, it provides the prepaid subsidiaries Transact, PaySpot, e-pay, Movilcarga, TeleRecarga and ATX.
As of 2019, Euronet services 50,000 ATMs and 330,000 EFT point-of-sale terminals across 170 countries.
History
The company was founded in 1994 by brothers-in-law Dan Henry and Mike Brown and headquartered in Leawood, Kansas. In 1998, Euronet purchased ARKSYS, a computer software company that specialized in electronic payment and transaction delivery systems. On January 23, 2002, Euronet Worldwide announced the formation of a joint venture with Hong Kong-based First Mobile Group Holdings Limited.In February 2003, Euronet acquired e-pay Ltd, an electronic payments processor of prepaid mobile airtime top-up services in the U.K. and Australia. This added a prepaid processing division to Euronet that grew with the September 2003 purchase of Austin International Marketing and Investments, Inc., a U.S. based company, and the acquisition of the German company transact Elektronische Zahlungssysteme GmbH in November 2003.
In 2007, the company acquired Ria Money Transfer, global money transfer company with a network of agents and company-owned stores in North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. In 2013, Euronet purchased Pure Commerce, giving it access to a suite of SaaS based applications.
In April 2014, Walmart started offering a store-to-store money transfer service, partnering with Euronet's subsidiary Ria Money Transfer. Walmart2Walmart allows shoppers to transfer money to and from 4,000 Walmart stores in the U.S. In 2016, the program was expanded into the global money transfer service market with Walmart2World.
In May 2014, it acquired UK-based international payments provider HiFX giving it access to cross border payment business in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. This acquisition allowed Euronet to offer international payment services between accounts for high-income individuals and small-to-medium-sized businesses.
In June 2015, Euronet's Ria entered the Middle East remittance market with the buyout of money transfer provider, IME. In July 2015, Euronet acquired xe.com, a provider of digital foreign exchange rate information, bringing Euronet a large internet presence and users familiar with foreign currency.
In March 2017, the company announced an unsolicited purchase offer for MoneyGram for $954 million. The acquisition however did not go through.
In April 2018, the company acquired Innova, which allows Euronet to provide VAT refunds to its customers. In December 2018, Euronet signed an agreement with Mozambique to provide software for the nation's financial system. Under the agreement, Euronet supports transaction processing services, connections to major card associations, ATM and Point of Sale device driving, card issuing, mobile recharge, bill payments, and digital wallets, among other services.
Euronet launched REN Foundation, a program that allows payment processors to add updated payment technology without having to replace existing hardware and software. The program allows banks and other payment service providers to adopt new technologies as they become available. The country of Mozambique switched its entire payment systems to run on Euronet’s REN Foundation program.
In January 2019, the municipality of Amsterdam announced its plans to prevent new Euronet ATMs from opening in shop facades, as Euronet "charges a hefty fee per cash withdrawal and uses unfavorable exchange rates." Advocates for dynamic currency conversion argue that fees, in general, offer visibility of the total costs at the point of transaction.
In January 2020, Euronet partnered with Standard Chartered to allow international ATM users to pay in their own currency rather than the local currency using a dynamic currency conversion service. The ATM service will be provided in countries across Asia Pacific and the Middle East. That same month, Euronet began offering a recurring billing service to allow monthly payments for AppleCare products. Euronet also entered an agreement with AMBER Alert Europe in January 2020 to publish active missing child alerts on ATM screens.
In February 2020, Euronet's subsidiary, Ria Money, opened its first retail store in Singapore, allowing customers to transfer money at foreign exchange rates. The same month, Euronet partnered with Amazon India to provide add-on payment services to Amazon’s mobile wallet platform. In April 2020, the company acquired Dolphin Debit, a U.S. based ATM outsourcing company. Euronet operates ATM outsourcing services worldwide, but the 2020 acquisition allows the company to expand its outsourcing services to the U.S. for the first time. In May 2020, Euronet’s subsidiary, Ria Money Transfer, announced an expansion of their money transfer mobile app to European customers.
Company operation
It operates in three segments: electronic funds transfer processing, prepaid processing, and money transfer.- The EFT processing segment provides outsourcing and network services to financial institutions and mobile phone companies. This segment provided these services using a network of ATMs and POS terminals in Europe, Asia, and the Middle-East.
- The prepaid processing - ePay division distributes prepaid mobile airtime, and other prepaid products and collections services for various prepaid products, cards, and services. This segment operates in a network of locations in the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific, and the Middle-East. It also provides prepaid long-distance calling card plans, prepaid internet plans, prepaid debit cards, and prepaid gift cards, as well as prepaid mobile content, such as ring tones and games.
- The money transfer segment provides global money transfer and bill payment services primarily in North America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.