Finnish EPassi acquires Swedish ActiWay to form leading Nordic employee benefit payment company

March 3, 2020

Finnish Epassi Payments Oy, the leading mobile payment solution for employee benefits and one of the fastest growing companies in Europe, acquires its Swedish counterpart ActiWay Ab. ActiWay is the market leader for wellness allowance systems in Sweden.

With this move, Epassi Group strengthens its position as a Nordic mobile payment powerhouse for employee benefits, widens customer offering and creates new growth opportunities.The acquisition grows Epassi Group’s user base to over a million active users in total and increases Epassi Group’s revenue to approximately 150 million euros.

Epassi Group’s subsidiary Epassi Sweden and ActiWay will continue their growth path together in Sweden. Their services complement each other in an ideal way, enabling an even stronger offering to current and future clients, users and merchants in Sweden.

ActiWay has doubled its turnover and user base during the past three years. The company’s unparalleled dedication to serve its customer base, its focus on digitalization, and its role as a recognized opinion leader allows the combined business to maintain impressive growth in the Swedish health benefit market.

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Niclas Jernberg, the current CEO of ActiWay, will lead the combined business of Epassi Sweden and ActiWay. Jernberg will also invest in and become an owner in Epassi Group.

“The combined business gives us an even better position in the Swedish market. Together Epassi and ActiWay will have more than 13,000 affiliated wellness facilities for users to enjoy. Our main goal is to increase our users’ wellbeing with seamlessly and easily consumable wellness activities. This enables us to create the highest level of value, not only for our employer customers and their employees, but also for all the affiliated wellness suppliers,” says Niclas Jernberg.

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With the acquisition of ActiWay, Epassi Group continues its expansion in mobile wallet solutions. It has recently signed a number of significant cooperation agreements with major players, including international mobile wallet giants Alipay and WeChat, while continuing to seek additional growth opportunities.

“ActiWay’s dynamic way of working and their path to becoming the leading employee wellness provider in Sweden is really unique and impressive. Together with Epassi’s mobile-based innovations, we’ll be able to offer even more suitable and tailored services to our growing number of employer clients, merchants and, of course, to more than one million active users in the Nordics. We look forward to continuing to grow in our two home markets, Sweden and Finland, as well as exploring growth opportunities in other markets,” says Pekka Rantala, CEO of Epassi Group Oy.

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In September 2019, Epassi boosted its strategic plan via a growth investment from Bregal Milestone, a pan European private capital firm dedicated to making investments in high-growth European companies.

“Bringing together Actiway with Epassi accelerates Epassi’s vision of becoming the market-leading digital payments platform serving corporates, merchants, and employees.  We are thrilled to welcome Niclas and the Actiway team to join us on this exciting journey.” says Matteo Bozzo, Director at Bregal Milestone.

The parties have agreed not to disclose the transaction price.

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About Epassi

Finnish Epassi Payments Oy was established in 2007. Epassi is a pioneer in mobile payment systems for employee benefits and has since expanded into a universal mobile payment service, becoming one of the fastest growing companies in Europe. Tens of thousands of merchants in restaurants, sports, culture, wellness and public transport accept Epassi mobile payments in Finland and Sweden. More than 8,000 employers with a total of over 800,000 employees rely on Epassi for employee benefits.
www.epassi.com

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About ActiWay

ActiWay Ab was established in 2005. Since 2014, ActiWay has focused on offering an ID card based digital system for payment, administration and follow-up activities on the market for wellness allowance, bicycle benefit and private healthcare. With over 320,000 users and over 8,000 registered wellness suppliers, ActiWay is the market leader in Sweden in offering health benefits.
www.actiway.se

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Company backgrounds and employee benefit system milestones

  • 2005   FriskvårdsChecken (currently ActiWay) was established in Sweden. It provided paper cheques for employees to use when paying for wellness activities.
  • 2007   Epassi Payments Oy was established in Finland, with a mobile-based employee benefit product for the Finnish market.
  • 2014   ActiWay was launched in Sweden. Paper cheques were replaced by a web-based system where users show their ID when paying for activities with wellness allowances.
  • 2015    The Finnish Epassi Payments Oy acquired a majority of the shares in Swedish firm Min Friskvård Sverige AB and brought fully mobile employee benefit systems to Sweden. Since then, Epassi Min Friskvård (Epassi Sweden) has more than tripled the amount of active users.
  • 2017   Epassi expands its mobile payment business through a strategic partnership with Alipay, one of the world’s largest mobile payment platforms. The Finnish carrier Finnair becomes the world’s first airline to accept Alipay payments during a flight, enabled by Epassi.
  • 2017   Epassi acquires Finnish company RJ-Kuntoiluseteli Oy from Vaasa including the employee benefit products of Tyky-kuntosetelit and Tyky-online in Finnish market.
  • 2019    Epassi secures a EUR 41.5 million strategic growth investment from Bregal Milestone and First Fellow Partners.
  • 2020    Epassi acquires ActiWay AB and forms the leading employee benefit payment solution in the Nordics with over a million active users in total.

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Overview

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