Ingenico’s Tech Diversification Strategy Gets its Own Brand

Ingenico Group has unveiled a new brand, Ingenico ePayments, as the latest step for the payment terminal maker in its evolution to becoming a provider of diversified global payment services.

The move means Ingenico’s Ogone and GlobalCollect divisions will form a single unit serving existing clients under the Ingenico ePayments umbrella, the Paris-based company said Jan. 18.

Bringing together Ogone and GlobalConnect, separate divisions of a couple of online and mobile commerce companies Ingenico purchased in recent years, is a key step for Ingenico’s global expansion as the company seeks to demonstrate that in a multi-channel world, it’s more than a traditional point of sale hardware company.

“Ingenico has been taking steps to become more of a payments services company, versus one that’s dependent on one-time sales,” said Rick Oglesby, a senior analyst with Double Diamond Group. Establishing a new brand to offer its combined serviced on a centralized platform should be a plus for Ingenico, Oglesby said.

Ingenico in 2013 purchased of Ogone, a Belgium-based software firm specializing in e-commerce transactions with a concentration of clients in India, Germany and the U.S. Last year Ingenico bought Amsterdam-based GlobalCollect, an e-commerce payment services provider.

The newly minted Ingenico ePayments brand encompasses 65,000 merchants ranging from small businesses and startups to global giants, processing more than $50 billion in transactions annually in 170 countries, with offerings ranging from payments gateway services to data analytics and fraud controls and management, Ingenico said. With its new brand, Ingenico moves “a step further towards becoming an omnichannel player,” Philippe Lazare, Ingenico’s chairman and CEO, said in a press release.

The move reflects industry demand for payment providers to increase their global reach, expand payment options, improve security and provide better integration of sales channels and integration of nonpayment services, he said. “There’s a long runway ahead, but it’s a move Ingenico had to make,” Oglesby said.  

Ingenico has also collaborated with partners to build up its EMV and Near Field Communication (NFC), teaming with Total Systems Services and cloud-based point of sale provider Beamm. Ingenico's work with TSYS involves a payment app that runs on certain Ingenico terminals and powers tokenization, encryption and NFC, while its work with Beamm places web connectivity on point of sale devices..