Good morning. Good morning to all of you. Welcome, I would say welcome back to Milan. Welcome to Nexi Capital Market Day. Let me give a warm welcome to the investors and analysts that are here with us in person, and also to the ones that are connected digitally. I have to say, it's great to find many of you physically again after a couple of years of digital conversations, digital discussions. It's great to be in person again. A warm welcome also to our friends from the media. Some of them are also here in person in a room that is just next door. I'm here today with, I would say, a good number of representatives from our Nexi team. Some of them you will see on stage after myself and Bernardo.
Some others are here to help us in answering to your questions, your curiosity, and so on and so forth. A few more you will have a chance to meet during the coffee breaks in our demo area. Let me focus on the title that you have chosen for the day. This is a very specific conscious choice. The leading PayTech, European by scale, local by nature. We believe that adding scale in our industry is extremely important. It's great. Nexi has scale. We also believe that in our industry, in order to win, you also need to be local, because the markets remain very local from many different dimensions. Nexi is local. Its nature is local. We really believe that combining scale and being local is fantastic. We really believe that's the sweet spot for our industry in Europe.
That's the sweet spot that as Nexi we are in, and we are very happy with that. Let me start by reminding all of us who is Nexi today. If you like our starting point for the rest of the morning. Nexi is a company with leadership across Merchant Services, across issuing by most of the measures. Nexi is also a company with a unique reach in Europe. We serve more than 2 million customers. We serve more than 170 million citizens with cards and other products. We partner, we serve more than 1,000 financial institutions across Europe. But most importantly, Nexi is a company with scale and profitable growth demonstrated over time. EUR 3 billion last year revenues growing about 10%.
EUR 1.4 billion EBITDA before synergies growing about 13%, and 47% EBITDA margin growing another 2 percentage points last year and growing consistently over time. Three are the key messages that we want to share with you today, and they will be the guiding theme of the entire morning. First of all, we have a privileged position in very, very attractive markets. As you know, we play in Europe, and first of all, we believe Europe is a complex, fragmented market. Therefore, for people like us, for companies like us that are entrenched into those markets, is also very attractive.
Second, we really believe that Europe has strong continued growth for the many, many years in front of us as far as digital payments are concerned, because the secular shift from cash to digital, if anything, is accelerated throughout COVID, and we see it continuing. In this attractive market, we are present, we are positioned in the most attractive markets that do see a penetration of digital payments that is still only 36%, which is, as a portfolio of markets, much lower than the rest of Europe as well. Last but not least, in these markets, we enjoy a nice mix of strong, defendable leadership positions and established challenger positions. That's the first message.
The second message is that we have a differentiated growth strategy, and we'll be spending about two hours today deep diving into the specific businesses with the team, showing you what we are doing, what we are achieving, what we plan to do. Now, in a nutshell, the three strategic drivers for us are the following. First of all, continuously differentiate through the best combination of our scale and our in-market customer proximity. Second, drive accelerated growth, where we see the most opportunities, the biggest opportunities, and there are three spaces where we will deep dive today. SMEs that are already for us, the biggest segment, the most successful segment, and we will want to do more and more there. e-Commerce, that we believe represents a great opportunity for us. Advanced digital issuing, and you will hear a lot about it, later.
Through superior products and commercial execution. Third, last but not least, obviously, you know, we will drive strong synergies a bit ahead or materially ahead of what our initial plans were, and continued operating leverage so that we can generate, you know, the cash that is needed to increase our profitability and invest at the same time. The third message is that we see in front of us continued strong profitable growth and strong cash generation. Four key points. We expect revenues to grow about 9% on average per year in the midterm. We expect EBITDA to grow about 14% over the same period. Now, with an EBITDA margin expansion from last year to 25% of about 900 basis points. Thanks to this, we'll generate excess cash.
Obviously, after paying for the investments and, you know, the extra support of the initiatives that are necessary to drive those revenues and that EBITDA growth. Now, we'll generate excess cash for about EUR 2.8 billion, and we expect to have a normalized EPS growing at about 20%, in the period. Three very simple and clear messages. Now, this is the plan for the morning together. I will start basically by going one by one through these messages and giving you more color and substance, on the back of them. Then I will hand over to Bernardo, that will take us through our growth plan, and obviously we'll deep dive into the financial components of it. We will have a short break, then we'll come back. We will have the business deep dives. We will deep dive, into the SME and large Merchant space.
We will deep dive into the commerce space. We'll move into Issuing Solutions, and we'll give you our flavor of it, why we're excited about Issuing Solutions. We will have another short break. I will come back for a few more words, basically, you know, recapping the key messages, and then we will have hopefully at least an hour or so for your questions. Let me start with the first message, our evolution to a privileged leadership position in very attractive markets. When we met only three years ago in this same room at IPO times, we were already a company at scale, but a company at scale in one market. We were an Italian champion. Today we meet again only three years after that, and we are a leading European PayTech. Basically, five have been the drivers of our evolution.
Organic performance acceleration, I really want to underline that because we've done also important M&A, but we've always delivered performance acceleration year- after- year, also through the COVID periods. Investments in technology and innovation. Investments in people, competence and talent development. Strategic investments and value accretive M&A. Obviously continuously also refining, you know, the portfolio of businesses we are in. You know, disposing the less core ones to be able to focus more on the more strategic ones. This journey made the company much stronger today, but most importantly, much stronger and ready for the future. Three years ago, we were the leading Italian provider with a domestic focus. Today, we have a European PayTech leader in most attractive markets. Three years ago, we had a national client base. Very good client base, very loyal customer base, you know, with strong bank heritage.
Today, we have a much more diversified and international client base. We had payment focus, being also in other adjacent businesses. Today, we have a stronger digital payment focus with a strong tech D&A, and we will come back to that. We're a company with good, strong, and increasing investments into technology and innovation. We're now the number one in Europe in terms of investments in technology and innovation. Last but not least, we were already a company with a good track record of successful M&A. Clearly, over the last couple of years, we've demonstrated we are also able to do large scale transformational M&A successfully as well. During this journey, we have increased substantially our scale, but most importantly, we have increased our growth potential. We've increased the number of merchants and cards by three or four times.
We've increased our scale in terms of revenues and EBITDA by about three times. Most importantly, that's really where I want to focus your attention, we have quadrupled the total addressable market from Italy to the many countries we are in right now. We're exposed to more market and more market growth. At the same time, we have completely changed the scale of our technology capabilities, going from about 300 very strong professionals working in product and technology to actually more than 3,000 and growing, which obviously is a big, big asset for our future. Not only we have made our company, you know, stronger, but also we have made our company more resilient. The portfolio and the mixes have changed on certain dimensions quite a lot. We used to be in Italy only.
Today, Italy is still very important for us, is more than half of our portfolio. By the way, we love to be exposed, so exposed to Italy. It's the best market in Europe to be in our sector, you know. By the way, thanks to the combination we see, we've increased, in absolute terms, our exposure to Italy even further. The good news is that now we're exposed also to other very attractive markets. We've increased our exposure to Merchant Services, and we will do it more and more going forward. Last but not least, you know, we have reduced our customer concentration from about 45% to about 23% on the top five clients, which are all still with us, and we're doing more business with them, to be very, very clear.
Increase of size, the enrichment of our portfolio, you know, is making the concentration lower. Overall, a stronger company, more resilient company. Let me now move to the market. Here we really want to make a very strong and clear point. The European payment landscape is complex, is fragmented, and we love it. We love it because given the fact that it's so complex and fragmented, it's therefore very attractive and very defendable for players that are strong and entrenched into this market as much as we are. There are structural reasons why this market is so fragmented. In Europe, we have about 150, more than that, probably, local payment methods, more than 10 national debit schemes. The enabling platforms, the technology-enabling platforms that are so important for merchants to run their businesses, for example, ERPs, CRMs, are actually very often country-specific.
Even if sometimes there is the same brand or the same product name on top of it, then the local implementation is very different. There are significant local regulations that differ market by market for payments and financial institutions. Last but not least, every single market has its own specificities when it comes to tax, administrative requirements, all these type of things that again, for our customers, are incredibly important. These are structural reasons. Clearly, together with them and associated to them, there are also market-specific reasons. In Italy and Europe, the SME segment is very, very large, very, very important and growing nicely, in particular in the countries where we are in, Italy, Germany, just to mention the two most important ones in terms of SME communities, and that business is extremely local.
Even when you look at the larger merchants, the vast majority of them buy locally, not only the ones that are local in nature, but also the ones that are more international. Given everything I said, in the vast majority of the case, they buy locally. That's the reason why now we have always served, even when we were Italy only, many global multinationals. Financial institutions, if you think about it, are also very local. Even the banks that are present in more than one European country very often do have different approaches to payments because they also need to adapt to environments that are different. As a consequence of all of this, the competitive dynamics that we observe remain local.
In a market that is very complex, very fragmented, it will remain complex and fragmented for a long, long time, you know, that is very attractive and defendable for strong players, for strong entrenched players like Nexi. Sometimes we see comparison between the United States and Europe, and honestly, in most of the case, they don't fit. United States of Europe does not exist, does not exist in our space. The second reason why we love our European market is because it's a fast-growing market that we believe with COVID has seen an acceleration of card payment penetration, and we expect this penetration acceleration to continue and to translate in about a 10% growth for the many, many years to come, as it is sustained by an economy, you know, that is more sustained compared to the COVID period, obviously.
We have a very positive view about the growth potential, the growth outlook of our sector. This is independent from the shorter term, you know, economic tensions that we may see here and there, because our business has proven over time to be very resilient to macro dynamics. I'm not saying not affected at all, but very resilient. There are several reasons why we expect this penetration of digital payments to continue to grow. You go from the wider adoption of cards, mobile payments, contactless, deeper penetration of terminals across the Board, also micro businesses, e-Commerce, more advanced products, customers coming on digital. The good news is that in most of the cases, these individual elements do combine themselves and accelerate the growth. A very attractive market because it's fragmented and complex. A very attractive market because it has a strong growth in front of it.
In these European markets, we are positioned in the most attractive markets. On this page you see a summary of where we are and a summary of the characteristics of this market. We are basically present, you know, with relevant scale in these geographies, Italy, the DACH region, Central and Southern Eastern Europe, and obviously the Nordics. If you combine these markets, we have access to about EUR 4.5 trillion of consumer spending, which is about 60% of the total of Europe. Most importantly, in our markets, we enjoy a 36%, only a 36% penetration of digital payments compared to the markets where we are not, where it is more than 60% already. We really love to be exposed to these markets, and we love it because this gives it, you know, a strong continued growth potential.
In this market, we also enjoy a nice mix of positioning. As you know, in Italy and in the Nordics, we are established, strong leaders. While in DACH and Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, we are more of a strong challenger with obviously the strength of the Group on the back of our positioning in those markets. Positioned in the most attractive markets with a nice mix of leader challenger positions. This is what is behind our ambition to grow with the market, but also to grow thanks to market share acceleration, especially in the geographies where we are challengers. In this map, we have plotted the places where we are. You know, the size of the bubble is basically, you know, the size of that market in terms of consumer spending. Horizontally, our positioning, our Nexi market share proxy.
On the vertical, digital payments penetration. It's very clear that we basically have two portfolio of markets. The markets where we have a leader position, where we will enjoy the growth of the market, and obviously, we'll do whatever we can to develop the value of the customer base and obviously, you know, defend our positions. But at the same time, we have a large portfolio of very attractive markets where we will enjoy the growth of the market, but also, you know, we want to have, we have the ambition to grow market share over time, thanks to our scale, combined with the proximity that we already have in this market.
Therefore, when you look at our plan, going forward, we'll benefit in the plan by an increase of more than EUR 500 million of consumer spend in the geographies where we are already over the next three years. We'll enjoy the possibility to accelerate market share in the places where we are not a leader yet. At the same time, which is not included in the plan that we are presenting to you today, obviously, there is another 40% of Europe where very selectively over time, we'll consider options to enter either organically or inorganically, adding additional value, to our growth. A market that is very fragmented and complex, therefore attractive. A market is growing a lot.
When we look in front of us, when we look forward, we believe that the evolution of the customer needs will continue to offer us even more opportunities, you know, especially for a company like Nexi, you know, with the strength that we have. This is across consumers, merchants, and financial institutions. I think this is, you know, especially the first box, quite obvious. I mean, we are all consumers ourselves. We all realize, you know, every day how digital payments have become a part of our life, how important it is that they work perfectly and they guarantee all the right level of safety, security, and all of that. Where I really want to focus your attention is more on merchants and financial institutions. Here, to be honest with you, COVID has given a strong acceleration to the change of behaviors.
It was already happening, but clearly the acceleration has been strong. Today, merchants across all geographies, across all sizes, across all segments, have understood very clearly that their ability to accept digital payments effectively, efficiently, cross-channel, at any moment, you know, is incredibly important for their success, for the growth of their business. Therefore, you know, they look for more advanced solutions. Not being always very sophisticated, they also look for support, assistance, help. Last but not least, financial institutions. Financial institutions have been on their digitization journeys for many years.
It didn't start with COVID, but clearly COVID has been a strong call to action, a call to acceleration for all of them. They're also, you know, in the process of transitioning their IT systems, you know, to more modern and agile ones with many challenges because it's not easy, especially for the more established banks. When it comes to payments, we continue to see, you know, multiple approaches to it. At the end of the day, there is a clear tendency, there is a clear trend to actually looking more and more for partnering because they realize that the speed of the industry, the level of investments it requires, the level of competence, specific competence it requires is for them more and more difficult, you know, to sustain together with the modernization of their core business, and is clearly another opportunity for us.
Second point, differentiated strategy to drive strong, profitable growth. We have articulated our strategy across three strategic value drivers and three core business foundations. The three strategic value drivers are the ones that I mentioned before. Therefore, differentiation through scale, best combination of scale and market and customer proximity. Focused growth, accelerated growth through superior products and commercial execution, especially in the three segments I mentioned, SME, e-Commerce, and digital issuing. Delivery of strong synergies and continued operating leverage. We are also investing, we will always continue to invest on three foundations that are key for our future, that are key also for the culture of the company. Superior technology capabilities driving at the same time because we need it. Innovation, agility, and efficiency. One integrated talented team with deep capabilities, and I will come back to that as well.
Last but not least, you know, ESG championship, but with a very specific focus that obviously goes on top of the traditional ESG dimensions that obviously, we're already working on and we'll continue to work on, which is making sure that payments is a driver of progress, social progress. Now, let me start with the first point that I believe is by now quite clear to you. Our scale provides us unique advantages, and here we have ranked ourselves against the other players for their dimension in Europe, you know, measured by EBITDA. That's very important because, it gives you a clear measure, you know, on the size of your business, the size of your ability to invest going forward, and to return also money to shareholders.
Scale provides unique advantages, efficiency and operating leverage, ability to invest in technology, ability to invest in innovation, in competence, in capabilities, and obviously ability to invest in scaled-up propositions that need to remain local, you know, but clearly the scale allows you know, to share and to, you know, invest more in developing them. This is a very clear concept, and Nexi has scale, has the largest scale in Europe. At the same time, we are convinced that customer proximity, market entrenchment, are at least as important to win in the local markets. Let me give you a little bit of a flavor of it, of what Nexi has in terms of in-market proximity. Let me start from here. Local payment methods. This is just, you know, a representation of some of the local payment methods that we are integrated with.
We are integrated with all the local payment methods in the places where we are. The special thing is also the fact that in many cases, not only we are integrated, we are connected, we offer them, but actually we operate them like the case of BankAxept in Norway, BANCOMAT or BANCOMAT Pay in Italy, pagoPA in Italy. In many cases, we actually own them, like Paytrail or P24 for e-Commerce in Finland and Poland, or like Dankort in Norway. Local payment methods integration. Local distribution. Local customer support. Take into consideration the fact that across sales and customer support, we have almost 5,000 people across our geographies, and we are very happy with that. Local partnerships. Partnerships will become more and more important, are becoming more and more important in our space, in e-Commerce, in ISVs, in the software space.
You know, we have a very large number of local partnerships everywhere. Just to mention a number, 1,600 local partnerships when it comes to ISVs and ISOs for serving SMEs. Last but not least, especially in a couple of geographies, strong cooperation with the local institutions that normally see us as the company that can really support and help the digitization of the country, you know, through the digitization of digital payments. We also have strong in-market proximity. What really makes us special, you know, is the combination of the two. Because if you combine scale and local entrenchment, it is very, very clear that Nexi has more scale than the smaller local PayTechs, or in Europe, in our markets, of the new PayTechs. Also has more customer proximity, more local entrenchment than the larger international PayTechs and the new PayTechs.
We believe that's the sweet spot for us and for our industry. Now we have a big challenge because over the next couple of pages, I will try to summarize, you know, what you will hear for two hours in terms of business strategies. Let me try to do it and, no, I promise you that will take much more substance and color in the following two hours. Now, Merchant Services and Solutions starting from SMEs. Clearly here, as you understood, we want to strengthen, continuously strengthen our European leadership. Three are the strategic levers for us. You know, on the proposition side, modular, flexible, one-stop solutions with specificities for the segments and the local market. Payment software integration through partnering with the ISVs and investments, continuing investments, even stronger investments in local distribution, both direct and indirect with partners.
As far as the large merchants are concerned, here we will want to focus specifically on the national mid-large corporates. It is a segment that remains very local, very attractive, very profitable, you know, that allows you to go in with a lot of competence with your solutions, but not necessarily customizing everything, you know. This is a space that we really love, we know very well, and we really love. We'll not go after every global Merchant like others are doing. It's fine. We don't need to be everywhere. This is, you know, the core of the value of the market in Europe, and that's where we want to stay focused on.
We will go there with industry-specific omni-channel vertical propositions with a deep local entrenchment through partnerships and technology integrations with the local relevant solutions and with further investments in dedicated local sales and support capabilities. e-Commerce, similarly, we don't want to go after all the commerce space. It's not necessarily for us. There are others that do it, and probably they do it much better than what we can do. We really want to focus on the mid-market. On the mid-market that is the largest in our geographies, the most profitable, and the one with more growth in front of it. We will do it, you know, with propositions that are high conversions, obviously with the largest possible acceptance of all different payment methods integrated with full local integration with the locally relevant systems. We will have local front ends with a pan-European integration layer.
Obviously, we will leverage the benefit of our strong positions in SMEs and LAKA, you know, to cross-sell also our e-Commerce solutions, while also doing very specific vertical investments on that segment. Clearly, this strategy comes to life with different flavors, because as I said, we have different positioning in different markets that present different characteristics. When it comes for SMEs in the leading markets, we will consolidate leadership and we'll grow value across verticals while we will want to win market share in the places we are a challenger. In the large Merchant space, in the leading markets, similar situation to what we have for our SMEs. While actually when it comes to the challenger market, we will focus on the verticals where we are stronger and that we see more profitable going forward.
When it comes to e-Commerce instead, we believe we have the opportunity, you know, and we want to capture it to grow in that segment across all our geographies. Clearly, which is not included in our plan, in our financials, over time, we want to expand our presence in attractive geographies beyond the ones where we are already present. Coming to Issuing Solutions, here, and you will hear it from the team very, very clearly, we are excited about the opportunities in digital issuing. Nobody talks a lot about it. It's a less understood space as well, let's be honest. Actually, we are very excited about it, because we see.
We believe that if you go beyond the traditional processing activities and you move yourself into the more advanced products, into the value-added services, into what we call Payments-as-a-Service, which offers to banks and corporates and fintechs end-to-end propositions, then it becomes a very attractive business, a very profitable business with a lot of growth in front of it. We want to drive that growth on the two axes. Let me start from the second one. On our customer base, we will want, you know, to upsell higher value services to the customers that are already with us with digital processing, but we will also upgrade, you know, the relationship on a product basis with our customers, you know, with Payments-as-a-Service propositions.
At the same time, you know, we have already started to win more relationship with new customers across the geographies where we are less present, you know, with the digital processing proposition, but also, you know, targeting the medium and smaller banks and the corporates and fintechs with what we call Payments-as-a-Service proposition, and we'll hear more about that. As far as the third business unit is concerned, Digital Banking Solutions, we will not have time today to deep dive also here. We have put in the deck that is available to you, a few more pages describing what we are doing there and our plans for growth. Basically, we will move in parallel on two fronts.
On the one side, we'll focus our growth and our investments in the account-based payments. Both accelerating the integrated account payment solutions and collection solutions for corporates and the public administration, which has great synergies with what we are doing in the Merchant Solutions space. We will drive account to account instant payments growth across Europe that we see having a strong future. In parallel, we'll continue to optimize our portfolio, you know, to make sure that we can focus, you know, where we see the biggest opportunity strategic long term. Therefore, over time, we will, you know, exit from spaces that are very nice spaces, but not necessarily core for our future, so that we can focus more on what is core. Now, third strategic driver, you know, delivering stronger cross synergies and continued operating leverage.
We are working, we have been working, we continue to work on all possible spaces to drive our synergies. You remember we said when we did announce the combination with Nexi, across Nexi, Nets, and SIA, that we want to deliver a long-term EUR 320 million recurring synergies. Our latest view is that we have more than 25% more than that, you know, with a good mix of cost synergies, revenue synergies, CapEx synergies. We actually expect to be already well above that target by 2025, and this year we expect to deliver about EUR 105 million, which is a bit more than what we put in our plan at the beginning of the year.
On top of it, thanks to the fact that we are now a company with a relatively limited weight of variable costs in our cost structure, and we are continuously working on efficiency improvement on all possible axes. We will continue to expand our EBITDA margin on top of what the synergies can deliver. This is not new news for us. We've done it historically when we were Nexi standalone. We've already started to do it in the new shape of the company, and we'll continue to do it more and more. These are the three value drivers. Let me move to the foundations. The first foundation, obviously, is superior technology capabilities at scale.
As we did combine the three companies, you know, we really created a super strong set of capabilities for us from product development, digital product developments, to best-in-class processing platform capabilities. To the ability of working with the banks that are very special clients. They are very special because clearly everything is mission-critical for them. Being able to work with them in their projects, in their strategies is super important for our future. Two, our capabilities when it comes to infrastructure, advanced infrastructure. As I told you, we're more than 3,000 people working in this space. We are spending, investing every year more than EUR 100 million of cash cost. We've also started to develop our own internal pan-European software hub, software house, if you can put it that way.
Obviously, we'll continue to evolve this capability further, having in mind two parallel themes, innovation, agility, and efficiency. As far as the product and solution platform layer is concerned, clearly innovation, agility is for us the key objective. Here we have a point of view, we have an approach that is quite different from the ones that you have heard from other companies. We will not try to go for the one single worldwide platform that addresses all customer needs, across all segments, across all geographies. We are not in that space, also because we are targeting different customers, probably, you know. We will maintain local front ends for in-market integration and customer proximity. We will evolve them, but we will maintain them.
We don't plan to migrate customers from one side to the other, you know, to try to drive the extra level of efficiency. Obviously, as we invest, we will also create reference solutions that we can move, you know, from one market to the other and use to enter new markets as well. What we are doing, we already started doing, we are creating a common layer, API based, where basically, you know, we will share backbone capabilities from added services to collection to APM management. That's where we will leverage our scale. That's where, you know, in the background, you know, without impacting, you know, the customer proximity, we will drive the advantage of our scale.
As well as, you know, as I told you, we are developing our digital factory, Nexi Digital, you know, where we are insourcing back all the strategic software development, and we will continue to do it more and more for efficiency, but most importantly for agility and strategic control reasons. When it comes to core processing platforms and technology infrastructure, instead, the rule of the game is efficiency and modernization. Couple of key numbers here. Core processing platforms consolidation from 25 to 4 processing platforms over time. Technology infrastructure, accelerated transition to open architecture and hybrid cloud with actually consolidation of data centers from 45 to 15, which is the minimum number to guarantee customer proximity with more and more of the workload transferred into the cloud.
Obviously, last but not least, no compromise security, which for us is a mantra where we have already consolidated from day one our teams, and we continue to invest, you know, on a daily basis. The second foundation has to do with people. About 10,000 people in Europe, about a third on product and technology. As I said before, almost half of them working with the customers in market to support them. More than 50 nationalities, about 43%, women representation in our company, which is never enough and we continue to grow, especially in the management levels. Now 7% employee engagement. We believe we have a very strong talented team and this is probably the most important message that I want to leave with you, we are evolving this team into one integrated organization.
This is for us, the completion of our integration journey. We did say that probably 1.5 year ago, and now we're completing it according to our plans. We'll move into one organization at the end of this year. This organization is designed to execute the strategy that we are presenting to you today. We will have four business units, with one dedicated explicitly to targeting that e-Commerce mid-market segment and developing the e-Commerce capability for cross-channel everywhere else. We will have one integrated IT team that will drive, you know, the technology strategies that I've just mentioned. These teams will be in charge for driving scale and transformation. At the same time, they will work in matrix with, you know, countries aggregated in four regions that will drive market and customer proximity.
I know that organization is normally a topic for management, is a little bit, you know, our in-house stuff. The reality is that we strongly believe that this is very unique, because if you look around, companies of our scale or similar to our scale in Europe, they are still actually in the process of, you know, combining realities that are very different, very fragmented organization. We believe this will be unique to us, and we believe this will allow us to execute our strategy so faster and in a more effective way. Last but not least, the third pillar for foundation, you know, ESG. Clearly, we are working, we continue to work on the core elements of ESG, from sustainable products and supply chain, you know, to talent development, governance, you know, to decarbonization, you know.
We set ourselves a goal of being at zero by 2040, and we are already carbon neutral, I think from last week from 2022. A specific effort we will put in making sure that digital payments are a driver of progress for society. Therefore, we'll do whatever we can to support the SMEs and the micro business digitization, to support the public administration digitization. We're already doing it. There's no news for us. To drive digital inclusion, as we have done as much as we could during the COVID period, and obviously always guaranteeing security and service continuity, which is, for us, the base of everything. In the attachment to this presentation, you will find one page which is the same with targets. We're giving ourselves very explicit targets, and these targets will be a part of management targets.
You know, at the same time, you know, we have already progressed a lot over the last couple of years, and we plan to continue this journey. We come to the third message, strong profitable growth and cash generation. I've already highlighted the key numbers at the beginning. Bernardo will obviously give you more color, more substance on the back of them. Let me just focus you on one number that is this one, excess cash generation of EUR 2.8 billion. This is obviously the result of strong top-line growth, continued margin expansion, reduction of extraordinary CapEx and OpEx that generates these EUR 2.8 billion.
These EUR 2.8 billion, are gonna be available for creating even more value for our shareholders, either by pay down debt or by doing more selective value creative, M&A, or giving back money to shareholders through dividends or buybacks. We will have the flexibility, given the size, the amount, you know, of doing what is right, depending on the moment, depending on the individual opportunities. On top of this, we believe, that we have even further opportunities, given, who we are in terms of European scale, market entrenchment, and full set of capabilities. The market could grow more. Honestly, the market has always surprised us. Every year it has been growing a bit more than what we thought. Obviously, there is more space, you know, for proposition and product evolution.
I think we're chatting before the beginning, someone mentioned the digital Euro. We are obviously a big part, core into it. Further efficiencies. You heard what I said about synergies, and we continue to search for more. Greenfield expansion, I've mentioned. Business portfolio rationalization, I mentioned. Last but not least, M&A. You know, our focus, you know, in considering opportunities will remain in the same spaces, in footprint and market consolidation for Merchant Services, European expansion for Merchant Services, and capability enhancement in e-Commerce and software in particular. Again, we'll be very focused and very rational in the way we approach it. Let me now stop here and let me hand over to Bernardo that will take us through our growth plan and will give you obviously more substance behind the numbers. Bernardo?
Thanks. Thanks, Paolo.
I would also like to welcome all of you here in Milan, who managed to make it here through our presentation, maybe the Fashion Week yesterday night. I hope you had fun, and thanks for joining us online, those who couldn't make it. The three areas we will focus on today, our advantaged financial profile, how resilient and predictable this is, the strong cash generation we're able to produce through growth with profitability. Our strategic growth plan, which I believe is compelling and credible considering our track record, which we'll also go through, and I'll walk you through our simple plan for value creation. Then excess cash generation, which is clearly strategic and valuable, and gives us, as Paolo has just said, multiple options to create incremental value in addition to the growth plan.
Before we start, I think it's important to level set with regards to how to benchmark our future performance, which I'll describe in the growth plan. What is the right starting point? We start with 2021 revenues. You see the EUR 3 billion on the left of the chart, and we adjust for M&A, both acquisitions and disposals. Some of them were completed during the year, some were announced and will be completed shortly. Also adjust for certain assets which are going to be held for sale and sold in the coming weeks and months. We land in terms of 2021 pro forma net revenues at EUR 2.9 billion. On the right, we see the impact in terms of EBITDA is marginal, I would say. We land approximate EUR 1.4 billion, the same as the full year numbers.
More importantly, I underscore how in terms of the impact on our margin, this is pretty much neutral. We stay at 47% in terms of EBITDA margin. Now, these changes will be effective only first of January next year. We will continue to report 2022 numbers based on the current setup, the current perimeter, and this will give you a chance to benchmark our performance this year against the targets that we had provided you with at the start of the year for 2022. Now that we have established a good base with regards to our 2021 numbers and the starting point for the growth targets, we will speak of, I'd like to talk about our advantaged financial profile, which I think is important to keep in mind as you evaluate Nexi's performance and the merits of investment in Nexi.
Paolo has told us about the diversification in our business, which provides consistency in our performance. It provides dependability in our results. These numbers are slightly different to the ones you saw earlier because they're pro forma for what I just discussed with regards to M&A, both on the buying side and on the selling side. On a pro forma basis, Merchant Services is our largest division. It's the one that grows the most, 54%. Italy, after the M&A with Nets and SIA, is still the largest country, but it's no longer 100% of revenues, 58% on a pro forma basis. Nordics, 19%. DACH and Poland, 12%, and the rest of Europe, 10%. Also from a client perspective, we don't have any concentration issues.
I would say our top five customers account for less than a quarter of total revenues. I think this shows the diversification across business lines, geographies, customers, that we have in the Group. I also thought it useful to go through our revenue drivers. There are three, clearly identifiable. It gives us growth opportunities in terms of our top line. Start with volumes, and this is the growth in our business which comes from market growth, from the secular shift of cash to card payments, and it fuels a significant portion of our revenues. Inflation also impacts us on the volume front, and I'll speak of inflation in a moment or so because it's clearly a topical argument. We have revenues which grow because installed base growth.
This is basically our presence in the European payments ecosystem, and that grows as the number of terminals grows, the number of cards grows, and that's another important growth driver. As an overlay on top of these two growth drivers, we have our initiatives, the Nexi initiatives, or we speak of them as value-added services, as customer value management. It's basically everything we do to compound, to accelerate the inherent growth in the market or the growth in our installed base. It's about winning new clients, entering new segments or geographies, introducing new products in the market, cross-selling, upselling. Everything we do, realizing synergies, as Paolo was saying, everything we do to compound our top line growth. There's some other factors which affect us either way. It really depends. The three key drivers are the ones we summarize here.
Ooh, animation in my slides as well. That's a surprise. Within these three growth drivers, what I would like to highlight is how each of our divisions effectively shares in the growth coming from these drivers. We have a diversified mix of revenues in Merchant Solutions and Issuing coming from volumes, from the installed base growth, which is a subscription-like set of fees, which are a very valuable underlay to our revenue growth, and they grow as well. Then value-added services, or as I referred to earlier, the Nexi initiatives. Overall, approximately 60% or just north of 60% of our revenues grow because of volumes. The other 40% grow with the installed base growth.
As time goes by, as Merchant Services grow and grow faster than any other division, that percentage will increase. We can now move on to costs and why are costs important? Because operating leverage is a key differentiator in our financial profile. With recent M&A activity, we've increased the proportion of costs which are fixed, increasing our operating leverage. This is critically important going forward in evaluating our performance because it will allow us to capture greater share of profitability in the growth markets which we participate in and that we spoke of earlier in Paolo's section. Now, we've spoken about revenues and costs, and I have a bit of a, I'd say, an example slide or a theoretic slide, if you want, on that tries to exemplify how we think inflation impacts our P&L.
There's a few key messages that I wanted to drive, or to leave with you. The first is that overall inflation is good for us in the very short term, and in time is essentially neutral in terms of our EBITDA margin. We have some key factors which are underlying this conviction. The first is that revenues are twice the size of costs. 40% of our revenues, the revenues you see them here, part of the 60% which is volume driven, which are revenues we generate from the value of transactions, that 40% of revenues reprices immediately. We don't need to do anything, and we capture the benefit of inflation from these revenues immediately. They filter in through our numbers. You see them already. Okay?
That 40% is off a base, which is twice the size of cost, so it covers the almost entirety of the cost. The other set of revenues also reprices over time. It requires negotiation. Here's the other key point I wanted to leave with you. Our leverage or our bargaining power is greater as a buyer of these services when we talk about costs. We can bring to bear the benefits of size we've spoken of earlier in the session that Paolo talked about. There's benefit of costs in managing our cost base as well. These costs don't adjust automatically. They take time. Think of, you know, the long-term contracts with our suppliers. Think of, I don't know, rent, these kind. There's certain things that reprice on the, in the shorter term, but nothing immediately and automatically.
Everything is negotiation, and we're a big buyer of these. This is what leads us to believe that overall we can manage the effect of inflation positively in the short term and with neutrality in terms of our EBITDA going forward. Another aspect that I would like to highlight is our consistent track record of delivery, of execution effectively. In the last few years or just if you track here from just before our IPO, we've effectively quadrupled the size of our EBITDA. I think what's important to highlight here is how this increase in size of EBITDA has really come with strong margins being kept where they were.
Of course, we slightly reset the margins following the Nets and SIA mergers in 2020, but we are still able to accrete these margins in 2021, and based on the guidance we've provided you with regard to 2022, we expect to continue this accretion in time. This has been largely uncorrelated to the macro environment in which we operated in. You see the data on the bottom. I think this is important to evaluate because it positions us credibly with regards to the plan that we will highlight in a second. Let's also speak about our capital structure. I believe we have a very stable and favorable capital base. We have maturities which are at the earliest in 2024, on average 4.5-year duration of the portfolio.
More importantly, the cost of this debt is 1.6% on average, and this is benefiting from the fact that we have a pretty diversified debt mix. We're benefiting from some zero coupon convertibles. The interest rate mix is favorable. 3/4 of our interest rate is fixed, and that means we are, let's say, protected or sheltered from this rising rate environment. Why is this important? Because clearly we're an Italian issuer, you know, have debt on our balance sheet, and I think a lot of people are looking at us, curious to see what that means. What I'm trying to highlight here is how the debt base we work off is actually no drag at all. It is well-diversified, well-managed, and doesn't have a particularly negative impact on our P&L going forward.
This is summarized by, I would say, the rating actions we benefited from in 2022. We had three rating upgrades by the three rating agencies. Furthermore, I would like to highlight how we are constantly monitoring the market for opportunities to optimize, to further improve this capital base. Just before the summer break, we secured a EUR 900 million five-year term loan at favorable conditions. There was a margin which was the same that we got when we IPO'd, so the same as our IPO facilities, and we're proactively using this term loan, which was secured at very attractive rates, to extend our maturities over time, and we're in the market with this today.
Now, I think Paolo told us that our distinguishing factor, what makes us unique, is our scale and local entrenchment, but I would like to add to that I think our advantage financial profile is also a unique characteristic that we possess. Each of these qualities, as you read through them, I'm sure resonate with a number of payments companies. Many of our payment peers are large, diversified, consistent. Have operating leverage and generate cash. I think we're the only one to possess all five under the same roof. We are the largest player in Europe in the payment space, as we have heard earlier this morning. We have gone through the diversification and resiliency of our business model, which benefits from these secular trends in cash to card payments. We have shown over time consistent, profitable growth. Indeed, even in the COVID year, in 2020, our EBITDA grew.
We have proven to possess operating leverage. We went through the accretion in our EBITDA margin over time, and we will continue to accrete even this year and expect to do so in the years to come. We have generated a significant amount of cash over time, thanks to the predictability of our business, which allows for the strategic deployment of the cash, either reinvesting in the business to compound this growth rate or to pursue other strategic alternatives like M&A and potentially in the future, other which we'll speak about. Now we have spoken about the advantaged financial profile, we can go deeper into the growth plan. Now, as we think of our strategic plan, we use a simple formula that helps us explain how we create value for our shareholders based on the advantaged financial profile I just spoke of. We have organic revenue growth.
We've benefited from it in the past, and we expect to continue doing so going forward. Our operating leverage will continue to grow to generate EBITDA growth and margin expansion as it has in the past. This generates a significant amount of cash over the plan period that can either be reinvested in our business in order to ensure continued increase in growth in the coming years. It also generates a significant amount of cash. We've spoken of it in Paolo's presentation, close to EUR 3 billion of it. It's almost EUR 2 per share, which gives us the option to generate further upside and incremental shareholder value creation in addition to the growth targets in the plan. Starting with revenues, let me walk you through the specific drivers we see in terms of our top line growth.
We expect revenues to grow because of the growth in the underlying market, but also supported by specific initiatives. We can see Merchant Solutions is a large contributor to our top line growth, with strong contribution coming from SME commerce. We'll hear more about them in the session after this one. Torsten will tell us how Issuing Solutions also grows. Merchant Solutions, double-digit. Issuing Solutions will grow mid- to high-single-digit, and Torsten and Alessandro will talk us through this. DBS, which is a more infrastructure-like business, has a pretty stable, low-single-digit growth.
All told, our top line will be EUR 4.2 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, in the 2021-2025 period of 9%, 2021 being what we spoke of earlier in the introductory slide about pro forma. On a geographical basis, we also expect to grow our business significantly in all the regions that we operate in. Italy, Nordics, Baltics, Southeastern Europe, they all grow mid- to high-single-digit and expect strong growth coming from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Poland. DACH and Poland region, which proves, I would say, the success of the diversification in our business with all geographies, as I was saying, growing handsomely. We can now move on to EBITDA.
Now, the top line growth we've spoken of, the operating leverage due to the predominantly fixed cost base of our business, lead to this 9 percentage point increase in EBITDA over the 2021-2025 period. We expect growth driven by revenue acceleration and the operational leverage realization to result in an EBITDA in 2025 of EUR 2.3 billion. That would leave us with a 56% EBITDA margin and a CAGR in the 2021-2025 period of 14%. That mid-teens range we've seen being a constant level of growth for Nexi in the past. Now all these numbers, the revenues, the costs, they all include the effect of the synergies.
Our EBITDA target includes the synergies that Paolo spoke of earlier, EUR 275 million EBITDA synergies by 2025 that we had announced as a target back at the time of the Nets and the SIA acquisitions. With regard to synergies, let me just underline how focused we are on extracting full value from these acquisitions. We spend a lot of time to make sure that we maximize the benefit from the acquisition. We look at synergies not only in terms of what flows through the P&L, so EBITDA related synergies, but on a cash basis, and we make savings, on the purchasing front, on the rationalization front, also on CapEx, which is critically important because it improves our cash generation profile.
This year we will deliver in excess of EUR 100 million of cash synergies, as we have discussed in the past. We've seen how we expect by 2025 to be 10% higher than what we originally envisaged. Over time, this target has been revised upwards as we have learned to be 25% higher, north of EUR 400 million in the medium to long term, which means that we will be able to benefit from the operating leverage, which is so critical to the success of our financial performance, to go well beyond 2025. Our CapEx profile is something we are pretty comfortable with. We'll see a peak through this year, as was expected, as has been discussed a number of times.
In the next three years, we expect overall CapEx to decline from the current levels to between 7% and 9% of total revenues. We are about, I would say, 60% complete with regards to investment of our integration and transformation CapEx. We said at the beginning of this year, we had approximately EUR 300 million bucketed as investments in terms of completing the transformation of the three companies which have come in to form the Nexi Group and the integration of them into one company. That EUR 300 million is pretty much 60% done. That means we have still another EUR 130 million to be invested, and this will happen over time between now and 2025. What are we doing? We are, you know, rationalizing the data centers. We have 45 data centers will be rationalized and reduced to 15.
Number of platforms will be reduced to 5. Overall, I think another element to highlight is how this CapEx profile generates a D&A, an ordinary D&A profile, which is about 12%-13% of revenues. I expect this for this year, and I expect it to remain broadly stable for the plan period. This is ordinary D&A associated with CapEx, so nothing to do with purchase price allocation or amortization of customer contracts, the write-down of goodwill associated with the acquisitions. If we walk further through the P&L, further down the P&L, we come to non-recurring items. They're very large in 2021, which is not surprising given the M&A we completed in the year. That's in the SIA deals plus other acquisitions.
These will be reduced by more than 50% this year, and we expect them to basically go to zero or close to zero by 2025. When I spoke of historic performance at Nexi, I urge you to check or to look back at the time of our IPO. We had a very similar proposition then. We walked into our IPO with, if I remember correctly, about EUR 180 million below EBITDA. Those shrank to just about over EUR 20 million at the time we announced the Nets and the SIA. What we're saying here, I think, stands to reason, and it's no different to what has already happened, and we expect this to happen again. Now that we've gone through the P&L, the bottom line, we can speak about cash generation and earnings growth.
Operating cash flow per share will increase at a rate of 32% in terms of CAGR in the plan period, so between 2021 and 2025, reaching EUR 1.39 per share. With regards to our normalized EPS, we expect that to grow 20% or so in the same period, so a CAGR of 20%. That means by 2025, we will have doubled our EPS or our normalized net income, which will be approximately EUR 1.2 billion compared to EUR 600 million on a pro forma basis for 2021. Consistent, this is just the output of the formula I was discussing earlier. Consistent revenue growth, operating leverage, results in a lot of cash generation and bottom line earnings growth. All of this gives us flexibility and optionality with regards to further deployment of the excess cash we generate.
Let me now share a summary of the medium-term targets that we've been through. This guidance is for the 2021- 2025 period. 2021, the pro forma numbers I gave you earlier, on an organic basis, so it doesn't include the benefits of further investment of the EUR 2.8 billion cash. As we've seen, the top line is expected to grow. We expect our top line to grow 9% CAGR in the plan period. EBITDA will grow by 14%. More importantly, we expect a 9 percentage point increase in our EBITDA margin by 2025. Close to EUR 3 billion of excess cash will be generated. This is cash in addition to what gets reinvested in the business to generate that top-line growth and is available for us for further investment to improve on these growth targets.
Our leverage will be, in 2025 on an organic basis, between 1x and 1.5x, considering this excess cash, less cash. Our normalized EPS will grow at 20% on average between 2021 and 2025. These numbers you've seen, what I would like to add is that we will be giving you guidance with regards to 2023 as normal, as part of our full year reporting, so in February. This is what we always do in February, because at that point, we'll have clarity as to how we closed the previous year, so how we closed 2022. We will have gone through our budgeting process, which will allow us to be more precise, more accurate, more reliable, frankly speaking, with regards to the guidance we give you. This is particularly important this year, given the uncertain environment we're in.
However, what I would like to do is, given, let's say, the predictability, given, you know, the advantage financial profile I spoke of and the characteristics of our business, what I would like to share with you is the fact that we are confident next year will not look very different from this year in terms of growth. What I would like to say is that we expect next year to grow at least 7%. If we go back to the beginning of this year, we gave you a range, 7%-9%. What we're saying is reiterating that next year, the floor will be at least 7%. This is not guidance. We will come to the guidance in February, but hopefully it will give you comfort with regards to our performance next year in the current context.
With regards to EBITDA, similarly, I can share we expect EBITDA to grow in the double-digit range. With regards to cash generation, of the EUR 2.8 billion, more than EUR 600 million will be created in the first of the three years leading to the total amount of EUR 2.8 billion. A significant increase compared to cash generation this year. Let me now provide you with more details on this cash generation and more importantly, I would say, on the optionality this affords us. In the next three years, the cumulative EBITDA Nexi will produce is north of EUR 6 billion. Of the EUR 6 billion, EUR 1.2 billion we will reinvest in terms of CapEx, the CapEx profile we saw earlier, to develop our business. Another EUR 900 million, unfortunately, goes to pay taxes.
We have another EUR 1.2 billion, which is more or less equally split between increases in net working capital, and this is normal in a company that grows. Another EUR 400 million cash interest expense, so only EUR 400 million, so no fears with rising rates. And another EUR 400 million in sundry other smaller cash items. That leaves us with close to EUR 3 billion, EUR 2.8 billion to be precise, more than EUR 2 per share of excess cash, bottom line excess cash available to us to be further reinvested and to drive further upside in terms of our performance compared to the targets that we saw on the previous slide. We can now focus on what are the alternatives that we have in order to use this excess cash.
Essentially, the way I think of it, the way we think of it with Paolo is we have three buckets let's say, or alternatives, three different strategies. Simplest one possibly is just to pay down our debt. This will reduce our gross leverage, reduce our earnings, and that is available to us. Simple. It's consistent with that 1x-1.5x deleveraging profile I was mentioning earlier. Or we could continue to invest in strategic M&A, and here we've highlighted a few of those areas in which we might do so. Continue our in-footprint consolidation in Merchant Services, expand in other European markets, acquire capabilities we might not have or improve them in areas which are particularly important for us, e-Commerce, software. So M&A could be an alternative for this excess cash.
We could return cash to shareholders, and we can do that in a number of ways, dividends, buybacks. I think two things. One is the important thing I would focus on is that we have optionality, and that is the real value. You know, having, you know, the luxury to be able to choose how to invest this in excess cash is the real value, I would say. Secondly, we have highlighted here a number of criteria we might use in terms of selecting, is that we retain this flexibility. We're not committing to one or the other. We have the optionality, that's the real value, and we hope to do the right thing by using these kind of criteria and assessing the opportunities as and when they present themselves.
Before breaking for coffee, let me run through the simple formula we have used that exemplifies our value creation proposition. We will leverage organic growth, our predominantly fixed cost base, to generate a significant amount of cash, part of which is reinvested in our business and generates the growth that you've seen. It also generates a significant amount of excess cash, that EUR 2.8 billion, which can be further invested in our business to further increase these growth targets. That is it. I think, we now have a 15-minute coffee break. We should be back by, I would say, 10:05 in order to continue with the next sessions for the day. Thank you very much.
Welcome back. I have the responsibility to try and keep us as close as possible to being on time, which is not easy. We did prefer to put two breaks instead of one, but then it becomes a bit challenging with a 15-minute break. We understand it. Let's now move into the second part of the day. We called it business deep dives. Our colleagues will give you much, much more substance about what we are doing, what we plan to do in our key spaces. We start with Merchant Services, one session dedicated to SME and LAKA, and one session dedicated to e-Commerce. We then move to winning in Issuing Solutions. Let me then welcome on stage Roberto and Matt.
Roberto Catanzaro, you probably saw him here on this stage three years ago talking about innovation and other topics. Roberto will take the lead of the Merchant Services b usiness unit in the new organization. Matt, that is already leading products with the current Nets organization, will take leadership for our product organization in Merchant Services as Chief Product Officer. After them, we'll also have on stage Omar Haque, here on the front line that will take us through e-Commerce, and he is the person that will lead the e-Commerce for the Group going forward. The floor is yours.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Paolo. Good morning, everyone, and warm welcome to all that have joined us today here online from my side as well. As Paolo was saying, during this session, I will try to explain our strategy and our approach to winning in the Merchant Solution space in the two main segments of small and medium enterprises and LAKA. Before that, let me just quickly walk you through our key messages and topics for today. We will start from the market. A market where we see strong and exciting opportunities, but which is also quite different from other markets such as the U.S., being much more fragmented, much more local, with strong local specificities who are driving the competitive landscape, posing hurdles and challenges to any new entrant, and the opportunities in terms of, for example, propositions and solution.
A market in which Nexi is a leader at scale in multiple countries, which have one key characteristics in common, the strong growth of digital payments and the big headroom for future growth of them. Therefore, our strategy in the different segments is based on a set of key pillars that we believe are the best for us to capture fully these opportunities. Namely, in SME, we will continue to reinforce and strengthen our European leadership. We will do so through a combination of innovative, integrated, modular, one-stop shopping proposition that we can craft into vertical industry-specific solutions. We will be the partner of choices for integrating software and payments, which is an important trend that we will discuss, and we will continue to invest in local distributions into distribution footprint, both on direct and indirect channels.
In the large Merchant space, we see a very exciting and important opportunity in the national and regional mid large corporate space. I will focus on that, and we'll capture that by leveraging a proposition based on a strong omnichannel backbone, then crafted into, again, vertical industry-specific solutions. We will deeply entrench into local ecosystems, either via partnerships and enabling platform integration. Again, we will continue to leverage the customer proximity angle that Paolo mentioned, both in terms of solution design, local support, and local sales presence also in this space. That said, let's move into the market overview. If these things work. Okay. Nexi is operating in multiple European markets, as we already touched with different starting points. We are a strong leader in Italy and the Nordics.
When I say strong leader, I mean market share that goes from 40% and up to 60%-70%. We have a significant challenger position, a strong challenger position in many other markets. In Sweden, for example, in Germany, in Switzerland, in Austria, in Greece, in Croatia, where we operate with market share that range from 10%-25%, to give you a broader range of what is, for us, a strong challenger position. Please note that we also operate in a number of other Central and Southern Eastern Europe markets, being their mainly Merchant Services processor coming from the strong CR heritage in that space.
One key common topic and a key common theme across all these markets is the great opportunity in terms of strong digital payments growth already today and for the foreseeable future, and a very relevant headroom to capture and to have space for this growth to run. We operate at scale in all of those markets and in both segments. For scale, we mean that we have over EUR 1 billion in revenues, with strong volume growth in both segments, ranging from the 18% to over 30% on SMEs. We serve over 2.2 million merchants in the small space, and over 3,000 corporates in the LAKA space. We do this with a very strong local presence in terms of customer operations, in terms of sales channels and sales force, and in terms of local solution design, again, in both segments.
Being at scale and being local, as you see from Paolo's presentation, is the cornerstone of our strategy and is supreme importance in the European market. Let's start from the revenue pool in the Merchant Solutions space. You see here a depiction of the revenue pool by two axes. One is the segment of the Merchant, the other is the nature between local and global. Three very important messages here. First key message, 90% of the European revenue pool in our footprint market is concentrated on merchants who are eminently local. By local, I mean that they operate in a single country, or at least in a couple of countries. That they value local specificities and the ability to capture the features that are connected to a single market. That they value customer proximity in terms of services and support.
Second key message, these local merchants are showing the most interesting growth rate for the future. Third key message, out of that 90%, over 50% is concentrated into the SME space, which as you have seen in Bernardo's presentation, is also our biggest opportunity for growth together with e-Commerce in the broader Merchant Solution space. When we talk about market being fragmented and local, what do we mean exactly? This is a very important specificity of the European space, in which the local features are not just something that you can add on top, but are really key business requirements to operate in a market for the merchants and for the digital payments provider.
The local specificities range from local schemes and APMs, that in some cases account for over 50% of the total transaction volumes, so they are absolutely a must to do business in that space. To local payment features that are typically vertical specifics, for example, meal vouchers, both in Italy and in Germany, or coalition loyalty schemes in Germany. To the integration with country infrastructure for tax and fiscal benefits, which have become hugely important during the COVID years, thanks to the government stimuli, and will become an important topic also for the upcoming years.
Last but not least, even if we have one common European framework for anti-money laundering and KYC, each and every regulator in each and every market is adding its own flavor to the regulation, its own reporting standard, its own specificities that needs to be addressed and tackled on a market by market basis. A super fragmented market where being local has a lot of implications in terms of product capabilities, in terms of product features, and this translates into very important hurdles in terms of scales and capability to be local for the payment players, leading to a situation in which in the most countries, the local players are the one who are leading the market in terms of acquiring volumes and presence in the market itself. That said, let's move into the two vertical deep dive on the two segments.
Let me start by sharing what we mean by SME and LAKA, just to give you a reference in that. When we talk about SME, we mean merchants who have less than EUR 10 million turnover in the smaller markets, such as Denmark, for example, or less than EUR 25 million of turnover in the bigger markets like Italy or Germany. Of course, when we talk about LAKA, we talk of merchants that are above that threshold. I will not recap our strategy that we touched briefly in the key messages at the start, but let me add one element. While we have common strategic pillars across the different markets, of course, we are differentiating the strategy market by market, taking into account the country specificities, but also our starting point.
Therefore, in markets where we enjoy a leadership position, we will focus our playbook in this space more into growing customer value. While on challenger markets, we will steer our business and our approach more into driving front book growth, into accelerating sales, in order to grow in terms of market share. We keep the strategic optionality over time to enter new markets, even via greenfield entry or via partnerships, according to the different situation. That said, let's start to double-click on each one of the strategic pillars, starting from our proposition strategy. With this, I'm handing over the floor to Matt.
Thank you, Roberto. The way to think about our product proposition is that in two parts. At the core, we have Pan-European capabilities that focus around ubiquitous acceptance of the global schemes, including the different form factors such as Google Pay and Apple Pay. We're building out the capability for small businesses to exploit the omni-channel opportunities. Things like Click & Collect, Click & Return in store, and offering them the ability to offer secure reservation capabilities and Pay-by-Link at the bottom of invoices. We have a full range of advanced terminals, and we're continuing to build that out, ranging from turning an Android mobile phone into a terminal, through simple, easy-to-use, low-cost terminals, up to very sophisticated smart POS terminals running Android software with the ability to integrate into tills, which we'll talk a little bit about later under our software play.
We're also building out a wide range of value-added services with a focus around things like working capital finance, the ability to enable your consumers to defer when they pay through Buy Now Pay Later, and leveraging our Issuing business to offer business debit cards. These are underpinned by a portal and app proposition, which enables our merchants to be in control of their business better. It enables them to get insights by leveraging their data, and it also enables them to self-serve and support themselves at a time of their choosing. As we've talked about in many of these sessions, we're also local, and our products are no different. We have local schemes, we have local alternative payment methods, and just to call out a few that haven't been called out before, Swish and Vipps in the Nordics, TWINT in Switzerland.
We've also built and integrated into local capabilities and are continuing to build these out in terms of enabling local ECRs, customizing for local tax regulations, and offering local quasi payment schemes such as meal vouchers. Of course, our operational capability, we have local language support because small businessmen want to speak their language when they talk to operations, and they want to be talking to people who are local. It doesn't happen very often, but should the worst happen, and we need to have on-site support, we have local on-site support who are able to go and visit the customers. In SME, we also recognize that different verticals have different requirements, and we're building vertical specific propositions in certain areas.
The propositions wrap in the products, they wrap in the way the products are used and the market positioning, as well as pricing. To give you some examples, in the restaurant space, we're bundling together the ability to accept meal vouchers, optionality around paying a table or paying at exit. The ability to attach a payment to a reservation to make it a secure reservation, so that if the customer doesn't arrive, the restaurateur still gets paid. And of course, as we all found out during COVID, the real importance of integrating into delivery apps and to offering table and menu management. If we look at retailers, again, it's a slightly different space, but it's drawing on that same product set.
The ability to have all-in-one smart POS systems, which are able to deploy applications that the retailer may want, such as bill payment, integrating in an e-Commerce proposition, and offering Pay-by-Link and other omni-channel capabilities. If, as we all hope, the world carries on returning to normal, though in certain cities and certain sectors, there'll be an increased demand for tax-free. In our core space, in the small space where you know a lot of our customers sit, we've built flagship propositions, bringing together sophisticated terminal capabilities with sophisticated digital enablement capabilities into a single simple proposition with clear pricing and clear capabilities. We put down the three flagship capabilities here, SmartPOS in Italy, SmartPay in Germany, and Nets Pay 2.0 in the Nordics.
You can see that they've got great traction. You can see the year-on-year sales growth is huge. But what we've also found is that customers who are on these propositions are happy. We measure our customer satisfaction through NPS, and the delta on the NPS is + 18 points on average across the three. Our products are built on technology. It's not built on magic, it's built on technology. I think that we think about our technology in three layers, our product technology in three layers. At the top, we've got local customizable front ends that work with customers. They recognize the different customer needs, they recognize the different needs of markets, they're modular, and they are becoming best in class over time. We also have integration capabilities off those top level propositions.
In the middle, we've got a set of components that we're calling Nexi Relay. These are reusable components that support alternative payment methods, that support digital onboarding and automated KYC, AML, that deliver fraud management capabilities both for us and for our merchants, and support analytics. These capabilities will be expanded over time, which is what the three dots signify. We're building these capabilities through the use of our Nexi digital hubs, which Paolo referred to in the beginning, and we'll talk about a bit later in the e-Commerce section. These give us agility, but they also give us ownership and retention of the intellectual property. At the bottom, we're driving towards a core common processing platform. This is where we do the same thing in lots of countries.
We have the ability to drive out efficiency through a single strategic platform.
Roberto.
Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Let's now move into the second pillar. The convergence of software and payments. This is a trend that, as you know, is relatively strong and consolidated in the U.S. However, in the European market, it's taking a different shape. We see it at its onset in our markets, mainly focused on a few set of specific verticals, such as restaurants. Again, really at the start of the emergence into our footprint markets. This is for a number of reasons. One key reason is still linked to the fragmentation, that while it's impacting the payment space, it's impacting the software, the store management software space as well.
Think about all the local specificities on the need to integrate, for example, with the country's infrastructure for tax and fiscal benefits, with the complexity that this is generating for software vendors in terms of scale needed for investment, regulatory challenges, and so on and so forth. Still a trend that is starting, where we believe that Nexi really has a differentiating starting point and unique positioning. We believe this because we have invested early on into building dedicated capabilities to really be the partner of choice for software vendors, and to really strategically entrench with them in 360-degree partnerships, with further optionality in terms of evolutions in the future.
Let's not forget that when we imagine a proposition that put together software and payments, typically this proposition are richer than a single vertical proposition because, also in the payment area, we can add a number of very interesting value-added services that drive customer value. That with our kind of portfolio in the SME space, we have a unique opportunity for up and cross-selling on the customer base of this kind of proposition. To achieve this, we have already investing into our direct sales force, and that is the key enabler for the kind of complex sales activities that this kind of joint propositions entail. Last but not the least, we are starting, as Paolo was mentioning, to explore the space of owned vertical software solutions as a way to gain further strategic optionality for the future and to understand better, all this space.
Let's get into each of these elements one by one, starting again from the market. Differently from the U.S., the European software space is super local and super fragmented. Just to give you one number, even in, just in Germany, there are over 1,300 ISVs. This, again, is due to the local market fragmentation. It's also because, frankly speaking, the local players are doing a very good job at modernizing their solutions versus the global SaaS platforms. No clear winner is emerging, neither in a country, neither in a vertical. By the way, the regulatory complexity and the local fragmentation is also creating very important hurdles for ISVs who try to internalize part of the payment value chain of that may think or want to enter the payment space itself.
Therefore, leaving a great opportunity for really be the partner of choice and the provider of payment solution to them in a strategic way. To achieve this, we have invested early on, as I said, in specific capabilities to be the partner of choice. Specific capabilities means capabilities in terms of ease of integration. For example, by offering payment APIs in a very granular and modular way that facilitates a lot, it simplifies a lot the integration between software and payments. By offering capabilities for supporting locally, again, local proximity, those players in terms of dedicated customer support, in terms of dedicated customer service for the merchants that might buy the solutions and to drive the discussion with the developer community in terms of evangelization and understanding of the different solutions.
We have also invested in the single moment of truth that typically in these solutions is super important, which is the Merchant onboarding, to a dedicated capability for fully digital onboarding and also a great simplification on those of all the KYC and AML procedures that in this moment and this kind of solution are in most cases have been important hurdle for customer conversion and therefore reaping a significant advantage in terms of simplicity and ability to drive revenues. This kind of capability translates into strategic 360-degree partnership with software vendors. Let me make one example, the one that we have with Zucchetti, which is an Italian leader in the store management space with over 700,000 customers in different verticals.
This is really a strategic partnership in which we offer the full suite of payment solutions integrated with the software products, starting from acceptance, both in-store with advanced terminals and moving into e-Commerce with dedicated gateway capabilities. We do for them digital issuing of business debit cards with payment accounts that basically enable the banking in a box proposition for the merchants. We are also active in the B2B payment space, with Open Banking-enabled payments linked to digital invoicing.
Together, we are proposing this kind of joint solutions to a network of over 1,500 local partners, and this very local distribution is super important in a complex country like Italy, where we are to reach very different audiences. This again is a unique Nexi approach, in which we believe that really we can be invaluable to the software vendors, because it's very difficult to have the combination of our scale in terms of sophistication of the solution and local presence to be able to drive this kind of partnership on a country by country basis. Again, this is not a joint example. We are already deeply entrenched in this space. We have over 900 partnerships across the different markets with similar players, and this kind of joint approach is already driving significant front-end growth and significant sales results.
When we look at joint solution, we always need to think that putting together the ability to manage in a more digitized way the store and the payment is really an advantageous marriage for both angles. Because the capability of the software are driving the adoption of value-added services, and this is driving customer value. Let me make three examples, again, thinking of the restaurant space. One key capability of any software in this space is the ability to manage ordering at the table and payment at the table. This, of course, sits super well with advanced mobile Android terminals in which you can load the app and complete the full order and payment cycles, again, at the table of the customer.
Many chain restaurants are moving into self-checkout and self-ordering applications, which of course need e-Commerce acceptance and full gateway integration together also with alternative payment methods, therefore driving additional customer value. Third example, deliveries, which have become super important in the time of COVID and now remaining in the customer habits. The ability of offering Pay-by-Link omnichannel capabilities, basically to send payment links via WhatsApp or SMS, email to the customer for quick remote payments is super important to manage deliveries on a very simple and fast way. The ability of Nexi to put together this proposition into integrating this proposition with software, plus to have a very strong SME customer base as a basis for cross and upselling is again a unique differentiator or a unique positioning for us in this space. Last but not the least, we are exploring the possibility of owning our own vertical solution.
As we know, we have acquired 100% of Orderbird. Orderbird is a leading player in the German software space for hospitality and retail, with over 15,000 merchants already enabled. It's basically a full store management solution end to end, complete with payments at the different stage of the process in store. We think that its most interesting capabilities lie in the use of data, in the data-enabled approaches that help the business owner grow its business in a very simple and effective way. Actually, it's already having a significant traction in terms of both sales results and customer value. This, for us, is a way to understand further this space, understand the evolution that the customer needs, and therefore, creating strategic optionality for the future.
In terms of the third pillar, our distribution footprint, we will continue to invest and reinforce our capabilities. Indirect channels, where we are very heavily investing into the digital acquisition capabilities in many markets. You will see an example in Italy in the next page. In telesales, we are already at full capacity and having very good traction in Germany and Nordics and are coming progressively also to Italy. To scale up our direct sales force, that is super important, again, for the complex solutions that are more needed, for example, for the medium part of the SME segment. We will continue as well to invest into our indirect channels. For example, together with banks, of course, in the markets where banks are more relevant in terms of Merchant Solutions distribution, such as Italy and Greece.
We do this by helping banks drive commercial effectiveness. For example, supporting them with two-step sales, either through digital or telesales, or with direct training and support for the branch network. Let me state from the start that not in every European markets, banks are still relevant in terms of distribution, but of course, working with banks is our one of our key strategic capabilities, and therefore, we remain open to the option of enlarging our banking footprint and partnership footprint in markets where, again, the channel is still relevant. I touched already the ISOs and ISVs or the software partners, so I will not stop again there. Let me just give you one flavor of the direct channel capabilities that we are continuing to evolve using the Italian digital store, which is basically a full-fledged e-Commerce store for Merchant Solutions.
The Merchant can come to the website, select its own offering, select its own business. We have a dynamic pricing engine that can adapt to the pricing condition to this combination. Through the website, the Merchant can complete a fully digital onboarding process, and therefore, be able to be operating in a very short timeframe. Our retail partnership, for example, with big chains like Unieuro or MediaWorld, are leveraging the same capability. The Merchant is going to the store, is buying the terminal there, and then it's activating the financial services part of the offering, the acquiring and the value-added services to the digital website.
This is driving a very cost-effective cost per acquisition, and it also growing very fast, especially in the micro and small part of the SME segment. Generally speaking, if we look at all of our key market or our key footprint markets, as you can see from the chart, we are already experiencing very good results in terms of growth of the stock of terminals and merchants and the acceleration of the front book. Of course, in markets where we enjoy already a leadership position, we expect that our market share is going to be stable over time. While in challenger markets, where we already see great sales tractions, we expect it to be growing in terms of market share, of course, with different degrees, but generally growing significantly over the next years. Let's now move into the large Merchant space.
Again, let me just remind that when we talk about large merchants, we mean merchants with over EUR 25 million turnover in the bigger markets and over EUR 10 million turnover in the smaller markets. Again, let's start from the market. The two elements of being local and needing scale are again very well represented in this space. If you look at the revenue pool in the large Merchant space by the type of Merchant, we can see easily that merchants who buy payments locally and that value the local proximity, the local capabilities, the local specificities account for 75% of the market share.
In this space, there are also many regional and some global merchants who are still buying payments locally because of the fragmentation of the IT infrastructure, because of the nature of the organization, because they just need the local capabilities to be competitive in the market. By the way, this local segment is the one which has the highest growth for the future years. If we take another lens, and we look at this space with the lens of the vertical, of the industry focus, you see that again, roughly 75% of the market is focused in verticals that are really local by nature because having the local capabilities is super important to drive their business. One example, grocery. Not having, in Italy, the ability of paying with BANCOMAT for any grocer, it's a deal breaker.
Therefore, having the full set of local capabilities is super important to drive the kind of solutions that these merchants need and want to use payments as a revenue accelerator. In those local by nature verticals, we are already very deeply entrenched. For example, in apparel and general retailing, grocery, in the general utility space, in the petrol area that is now moving into electric vehicle charging, which is a great engine for future growth across the different markets, and so on. Let me say already from the start that there are instead verticals that are much less of a strategic focus for us. Two examples, travel, airlines or luxury. This is for three reasons. Reason number one is that those verticals are very limitedly represented in our revenue pool.
Second reason is that for the nature of those verticals, the capabilities that are required to serve those merchants are more global. Same merchants are more global by nature, and therefore less a strategic focus for our propositions and capability building. Third reason is that this is already a very heavily contested space, which, with low profitability, therefore much less interesting in terms of revenue pool and revenue growth. We do serve over 3,000 corporates, and we are super enthusiastic about the great customers that we have, representing many flagship merchants and corporates across the different markets in different verticals. However, we see that our real great opportunity lies in what we call the mid to large corporates. This is the space of merchants who have less than EUR 150 million of turnover.
This is where we are super deeply entrenched in all our markets. This is a space which has a very significant opportunity. This is over 50% of the revenue pool. These are the merchants who value more the ability of combining scale to a superior product and propositions and local proximity in terms of solution design and support. Therefore, really leveraging on our strategy pillars and strong points. Typically, we can serve those merchants with more industrialized solutions, therefore leading to lower cost to serve. They typically have a single Merchant Services Solutions provider. Therefore, this less contested, being a less contested space. This, in the end, boils down to be much more profitable than the top LAKAs which have less of these characteristics. Super important opportunity in this space.
Again, we plan to capture all these very exciting opportunities through a combination of our three strategic pillars that I've already discussed. Let me reiterate again, also in the LAKA space, that we will take into account a market-by-market approach, considering our starting point, focusing more on consolidating leadership and driving customer value in leadership markets, while we will focus on front book growth and market share acquisition in challenger markets, of course, focusing into the local by nature verticals that I discussed before. Over time, also in this space, we keep the option of entering new markets, new countries, either via greenfield or through partnership. Also, LAKA, let's double-click on each of the pillars of our strategy, and again, starting with propositions.
In the following moment, Matt will lead us through the proposition, and we will see also a number of case studies and examples that give you the flavor of what we are actually doing in this space with our real customers. You will find many more also in the attachment of the deck. With that, Matt, the floor is yours again.
Thank you, Roberto. In the corporate space, we recognize that. It's quite interesting. I've been standing up and talking about payments now for over 10 years, and I seem to remember one of my first discussions was about how e-Commerce and face-to-face would start to merge, and now I can honestly say it has. Commerce for large corporates is about omni-channel or unified commerce even. There is no difference. Our core capability, our foundational capabilities are built around classic omni-channel capabilities, Click & Collect, Click & Return. They're also built around the ability to accept the payment that your customer wants to pay with, quite often, alternative payments. They also recognize convergence, so the ability to do in-app payments, be that away from the shop or even in the shop.
You'll see some things that are common to the SME process, the ability to use SoftPOS. In the case of the SoftPOS, the ability to turn a mobile phone into a terminal, that's being used to change the way the shopping experience happens in the store. We've got one customer who's enabled most of their sales assistants, so the sale can take place at the point where the customer's experiencing the product rather than having to take the product to a checkout. Cross-channel tokenization is what sits behind those Click & Collect, Click & Return journeys that enables the customer to be recognized in the same way in-store as they are online. Of course, data. You know, analytics for merchants, analytics to improve transaction authentication, and analytics to provide insights.
In the case of large corporates, you need to build products that work in their verticals. We pulled out three verticals here. If we look at grocery, the ability to support self-checkout, automated checkout, actually using an app to do the scanning is to do checkout, which we'll come to later. The ability to integrate the Merchant's loyalty capabilities, and the ability to offer bill payments when you reach the checkout. In the apparel space, the ability, again, just as we saw in SME, the ability to defer payment through Buy Now Pay Later. The ability to support the Merchant's drive towards ESG through the use of digital receipts and digital receipt management. The ability to support tax-free and dynamic currency conversion to improve the revenues that the Merchant receives.
Co-branding cards issuing, again, bringing in our issuing colleagues. In the transport space, which is a rapidly expanding space in Europe, you need to be able to work with the transit gateways that are the bridges between the ticketing systems and the payment systems, and to be able to support different fare capabilities through fare engines. Which drives out a core set of Merchant needs as you'd expect. High acceptance rate. This is what helps drive the merchants' revenues. Superior service levels, and the ability to support multiple store formats and different journeys through those stores. It's also still about being local. It's about locally enabling the APMs that matter in the market.
It's about, in some of our markets, having the ability to leverage with our issuing colleagues to create single unified data opportunities for the Merchant to give them insights they couldn't otherwise get. Of course, it's about local operations. It's still about talking to the customer in their language. It's still about having people who can get on-site to fix problems if that's needed. In addition to that, integration is important, and we'll talk about that in a minute. I want to talk some examples. Conad is an example from Italy. This is a customer where we've gone with them on the journey, and we've worked with them to enhance their in-store capability. Of course, it's about reliability and scale. Every multi-channel multi-lane retailer is about reliability and scale. They can't afford to be down.
It's also about going on a journey with them around e-Commerce and in-store experience. A key factor here was the ability for some of these stores, which are embedded in the communities that they operate in, to be able to offer bill payments at exit, at the checkout. This is a slightly different case. Unfortunately, we can't name the customer. In this case, this customer is both B2C and B2B. They operate in both the consumer and the business space. They've got a broad range of capabilities, but I think one of the interesting areas is in the hard landscaping space, where they're a retailer both to consumers who are looking to improve their gardens or to businesses such as farmers or people who are doing building work.
They were looking for an innovative, let's call it innovative store format experience. Let me give you an example. If you're buying hard landscaping materials, you don't want to go check out the material, the stone, then go to the till to pay for it, then go back to the stone to load your van. You wanna pay at the van. You wanna bring your van up to the material, pay, load it. We help them do that. We also worked with them to take them on an e-Commerce journey. They were able to transact online and offer capabilities to their customers online. Then you get into a Click & Collect experience. Also to offer them and support their ESG movement with digital receipts and to offer e-invoicing in the B2B space. I said I'd come back to this.
In the corporate space, it's vital you operate within the corporate's ecosystem. That involves building integrations out to people like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics in the CRM space. It involves building out integrations into the customer's accounting platforms and their enterprise resource platforms, such as SAP. It also involves building out bridges between your in-store capabilities and their in-store capabilities around their ECR and their till applications. Interestingly here, the top end of SMEs, so medium, and the bottom end of large starts to converge. You'll see names that we've already mentioned, Fortnox and Zucchetti, which were on the ISV piece of the presentation. It's also about integrating to vertically specific software capabilities in the industry verticals we want to play in.
One I'll call out here is Oracle OPERA, which is a core software capability used in the hotel industry. Another case study here, which I was informed yesterday I actually need to pronounce as KIKO, not Chico, which is what I was pronouncing it as yesterday. KIKO, this is a customer who we worked with in Italy, where they were again looking to go on an e-Commerce journey available in multiple markets. The key thing for them was the ability to integrate with us in terms of advanced reporting. As you can see here, we won against a digital native player. This was an example of us winning against the new players in the market space.
Final case study, which I'll touch on briefly, Tom Tailor, which is a fashion brand in Europe. Again, this is another example of where we work closely with them to understand their local needs. We gave them local acceptance methods that their previous player wasn't able to do. Again, we offered deep integration into their ERP platform to improve their reconciliation and back office capabilities. I'll hand over to Roberto.
Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Let's finish with the third pillar of our strategy. We have shown our scale is driving our solutions. Let's go back to the customer proximity. In this space, customer proximity means a number of different things. Means the ability to stay close with the customer to design solution with him, which doesn't mean tailor-making every time the solutions, but try to leverage the modularity of our propositions to craft a solution around his needs. Means being closer during the sales discussion. Means being very close in terms of customer support and service levels with dedicated service manager and the ability to be on the field, for example, for terminal replacement with the very high service levels for the mission critical services and business. This is very well recognized by our customers.
You can see one of the verbatim from one valued customer, but also a couple of examples how the customer proximity translates into real things. Let's start with Eni. Eni is a very big corporation which we all know, in which we are really a full services provider. We do basically everything in the payment space for them. We do this because we have been able to work with them to craft vertical solutions in a very fragmented, complex space such as fuel and electric vehicle charging. We do the full omni-channel acceptance for them with very different store formats that range from unattended to normal store in the petrol stations. We do digital issuing in the space of corporate and fuel cards. We support them on B2B and supplier payments via Open Banking and account-based payments.
We help them drive revenue growth in terms of value-added services, for example, with other type of payments at the gas station. Again, imagine that this is a space where the solutions and the technicalities are really super fragmented, and therefore you need to have the kind of vertical integrations that Matt was mentioning. Another quick case instead of the customer support. This is a very important German hotel chain in which we won against a global digital native player because we were able to be in the market with customer support and logistics, therefore being able to serve them, in a much more closer, precise, and quick way than all our other competitors. Let me finish by just quickly reiterating the key message for today. A very exciting market, very strong local opportunity. However, very local, very fragmented, with strong hurdles for any new entrant.
A market in which we are already leaders at scale in multiple countries. On the small and medium enterprises, very strong growth opportunity, very exciting opportunity again, in which we'll continue to drive our leadership by a combination of superior propositions, being the partner of choice for software to payments convergence, and investment and focus into being local in distribution. Large Merchant space with great opportunity in the national and regional merchant, especially in the mid to large corporate area, where again, the ability to combine omni-channel backbone with vertical focus is a driver for winning in terms of propositions and entrenching in local ecosystems and being super local in terms of customer proximity is super important for the success. That said, I'm handing over the floor to Omar, which will lead us to the e-Commerce strategy.
I suspect many of you are wondering why I'm talking to you. Partly because Matt and Roberto have done a good job of explaining why we're fundamentally omni-channel in everything we do. Why when we talk to our customers at a local level, in specific countries, in specific verticals or specific segments, e-Commerce is one of the things that we offer. Why do we have a deep dive? The answer simply, and not to reuse the word unique, although it is unique, I'll call it a special opportunity. We have a segment in Europe, the mid-market, and I'll show you this in a sec, that we think very few others are focusing on.
Everything that Paolo, Bernardo, Roberto, and Matt have told you this morning about Europe being local and fragmented, if that's a seven or an eight out of 10 of localization and complexity, in e-Commerce, you dial that up to an 11. Everything we said before is true, but applies even more deeply, even more fragmented, even more complex in e-Com. I'll show you in a sec why the mid-market is the largest, fastest-growing segment for us to focus on and the least contested. Part of that special opportunity is we already have a starting position that means that we're better positioned than anyone else to unlock this opportunity and drive our future growth. That links directly to the strategy. I won't belabor it here, but I'll take you through it as we go through the next few pages.
The map here, like every other map, is showing where we lead, where we challenge, and where we can serve. The important note is on the left-hand side of the page, this is today, roughly, depending on who you use as a source, a EUR 4 billion- EUR 5 billion revenue pool. In the dark purple, we're exposed to about half of that revenue pool already, and in half of that, we lead, and in the other half, we're a strong challenger growing faster than the market. If we look at where we're starting, over EUR 200 million of revenue, despite the bounce back or the drawback of the e-Com retail market, in particular in Europe post-COVID, growing very strongly double-digit, enabled by a great franchise of very deep experts and even more importantly, very deeply obsessed nerds focusing on these local propositions.
It is the starting point. Everything I'll show you are things that we have built, that we've deployed into the market, and is gonna drive the growth plan that Bernardo and Paolo showed this morning. Complexity. On this side of the page is a set of bar charts, obviously, split out by country. The dark purple over here is any local method of payment. This could be the local debit scheme, Dankort in Denmark. It could be a local Buy Now Pay Later payment method, PayPo or Twisto in Poland. It could be a local wallet like BLIK or Vipps in Norway. The gray are international cards. This is the share of volume, how people pay in e-Commerce in these countries. The gray are things that most of us will know, some of us might even love, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, PayPal.
What's astonishing to me is that the international payment methods are the alternative. This is not how people pay in our countries. They pay with something other than the international cards. If we look at what those represent, this is about 15%-20% of the volume. We of course, deeply integrate to these, right? We're an acquirer. We have to offer these. That's obvious. At the same time, and Paolo mentioned this at the beginning, we deeply integrate to everything that powers the purple on the left-hand side of the page. I'll share with you in a couple of pages what we mean by deeply integrate. Then even more privileged, we own or operate and therefore can participate in the economics of some of these payment methods that in many of these countries is the way to pay.
In half our markets, we participate in the end-to-end money flow of how people pay online, which is genuinely unique. Therefore, complexity is not just our friend, it's a driver of our growth. Because if I talk you through a visual example of what merchants have to deal with, this increases our relevance, and then I'll show you the value creation from that. Here you'll have a customer who has a web shop or an app or a kiosk or anything like that. Matt's given you tons of examples. Obviously, they have some kind of checkout page. At some point, you have to press pay. Many of you know the role of quote-unquote, "a payment gateway," which provides the technical connectivity to the checkout.
You'll hear about many of our peers proud of their full stack payment solution or their full stack acquiring, which is connecting the payment gateway, the IT technical integration with moving money on the international schemes. At the same time, many are proud of integrating to walls of logos. Historically, those of you who've been covering other areas of the TMT sector, there's something similar happening in payments. Counting the number of technical integrations is no longer a differentiator. There are plenty of aggregators who do this, who provide the technology to connect from one method of payment to a merchant website or offer the checkout. The differentiator now is actually being able to collect, meaning touch the money flow and simplify it for the merchant. I'll show you why this is so powerful in our markets.
Of course, in many cases, we're also able to shape how this happens, and we have a privileged position because of that. If I look at it from an economics perspective, if we index average take rates to gateway plus card acquiring, that's the second column. Number one plus number two, let's index that to about 100. APMs are our friend. The complexity makes us relevant, and we make as much or more money by offering the money flow for these payment methods. If we own or operate them, it can be +20% up to +80% of what average take rates can be. When we look at legacy solutions and some of our peers in the market, our average future take rates are supported by this market structural development. That's a complexity thought.
The second thought is, well, who are we talking to? This is a relatively simple bar chart showing a segmentation based on size. Micro merchants, small, medium, large national, which Paolo and Roberto spoke about being different from large global, and then the marketplaces. Marketplaces, you can think of Amazon, eBay, if you go out east, AliExpress and many others. The thing that has me absolutely excited is if we look at volume, it is about half of volume in Europe, and it's 60% of revenue already now. If I look at the world going forward a few years, it is also the fastest-growing part of the market, and it's the least contested. If I break out this mid-market, small through to large national and flow it across, these are our peers.
In nine out of ten cases, it's a domestic local gateway provider that we're competing against because the micro merchants tend to go on to big web shop platforms. The global reference, for example, is Shopify. We don't tend to encounter them because they don't play in that space. Then the large global brands, the large marketplaces use global providers, which again, in this segment, you don't encounter very often. We're in an interesting market, incredibly complex, with a segment that we think very few people have focused on and where we can create enormous value because they also have the biggest challenges to operate online. First of all, they are completely outgunned as they try to turn people visiting their website into shoppers. The dropout rate, you might have heard of the term conversion.
That's used a lot in the payments industry, but also in ad tech. Typically, index 100 visitors might react to an ad campaign. When they actually get to your checkout, you're probably at usually index 10, and then finally, you're probably at index 2 of paying customers, and then there's the whole loyalty loop to bring them back. What can we do to turn shoppers into paying customers is a huge problem because the very large merchants have hundreds of people, developers, web experts, search engine optimizers, UX designers, obsessing over this. The micro merchants are supported by big global web shop platforms who also obsess over this. They have to solve this themselves. There's an opportunity for us to create value-adding propositions here. Second, if you think about those purple bars, the different ways people pay, shoppers pay.
If you're a merchant and you have to receive these payments and try to match it to an order, and then there's multiple suppliers that you have to integrate with, have bank accounts for, think of the chaos it causes in your back office. They struggle to deal with that complexity. Again, we can create value to simplify that complexity on the back end. Finally, they're completely outspent. Imagine if you're running a 200-person company selling shoes online versus one of the big fashion retailers, a brand like Zalando, in Europe. The likelihood is your advertising budget has no relationship to what the bigger player can do. How do you attract customers at a local level? Now, we don't do that ourselves. We'll show you an example.
Being able to use local partners who help solve this problem rather than global partners is key to their success, because they'll rank higher in the search and more likely to find a customer. All of that's enabled by experts in e-Commerce, on sales, on support, and more importantly, in-country, who speak the language, who understand what it's like to operate here in this vertical, in this country. I'll take you through three examples of how we do this. This high converting checkout, how we turn relatively low functionality local payment methods into something that just feels more natural to a global audience, but then also drives digital penetration, creating a flywheel of growth. Second, those local solutions need to come at scale. Again, we think there's a unique approach that we have compared to peers. I'm quite excited by this one.
Finally, we have a huge installed base who, relative to the U.S. or the U.K., adopt e-Commerce at roughly 50% to 30% of those benchmarks, giving us a massive runway of growth in the future. Fundamentally, this is really about expanding share in every single market. Number one, how do we help them drive more revenue with one-click checkout? I'll then show you, and this is one of my favorite examples. You might see this in your little handouts or if you're following online, if you have a downloadable PDF. This is a 25-character password. This is usually typical. This is an actual screenshot from a Polish bank who will remain nameless. What's especially entertaining about this is the password you have to enter to pay.
On top of that, the order the characters move around. You have to remember 25 characters and go, I don't know, home, sweet Alabama, and is it A, B or whatever. Simplifying that complexity is incredibly powerful. Then finally, we'll give you an example from Italy of how even a vertical solution has local specificities that require deep understanding, not just of payments, not just of the country, not just of the payment method, but of that vertical in that country and how people pay and what that unlocks. First one-click checkout. This is a screenshot of a mobile checkout page. You can see various payment methods. You've probably seen things like this before. What's different about us is that we bring this kind of slick checkout to the mid-market without having to use a specific shop platform, meaning you're not locked into this.
Embedded in here is basically people on file. If you pay with us, we will store your shipping address and your payment details. In 2.4 years, we now have 50% of the Nordic population on file. If you think of a mid-sized merchant trying to sell online, and you've gone through the purchasing process, and I know this drives me crazy. Typically, you get a registration page. You have to enter a shipping address, usually a separate billing address. You might wanna choose how you want it to get shipped. You probably have to choose what payment method. You have to find it. You have to tick a terms and conditions box and then get sent somewhere else, where usually you typically have to enter another billing address again to see if that matches, and then you're done.
To remove that complexity, you can think of the number of shoppers who drop out in the checkout flow if you go with default solutions in e-Com from your web shop. Because of this, and because of our scale at a local level, the fact that we have, for example, 2.5 million Norwegians in a country of 4 million people in our solution means that a mid-sized merchant benefits from that if I, or I think there's a couple of Norwegians in the audience, then go to another merchant and try to check out, it becomes a one-click affair. You don't have to deal with all those steps.
Therefore, what we've seen is a 12 percentage point improvement in conversion, which sounds slightly abstract, but for a merchant, and therefore for us, as Bernardo explained, a good portion of our revenues come from the ad valorem on volume, 5%-20% increase in revenue. Second example, this is Poland. In that purple bar that I showed on payment methods, 80% of Poland is some form of local payment, half of which is paying cash from your bank account, and the other half is using the BLIK wallet with all sorts of interesting login approaches. This one, if you remember that screenshot I showed you with the 26-character jumbled password thing, that's the bank login. You enter your password. You've probably had to do this with your own bank. You then have to respond to a challenge.
You'll enter an SMS code. You'll then enter who you're paying, add the address, the payment amount, but then there's a new password to prove that that's the payment you wanna make after you've logged in. You can imagine that sending a specific amount from your bank account in cash to a merchant prevents entire sectors of the local Polish economy from participating from the benefits of digital penetration, basically from selling online. Simple things like hotel bookings, where you wanna do a, quote-unquote, "pre-authorization," you probably don't wanna send cash irrevocably to a hotel because it might change. You probably on online groceries struggle with, well, simple things like if I've ordered some apples, but it turns out to be 1.1 k, not 1 k. Do I now have to log back into my bank account to send the top-up in?
We see low penetration in those verticals. Monthly services like video streaming just don't work because you have to log back into your bank account and send the payment every time. What you'll notice is there are entire verticals, if you look at the Polish e-Com space, that are under-penetrated relative to benchmark. This is another thing we obsess about. How do we adapt local methods of payment with these global low-friction features, the way an Apple Pay might work? In this case, we're showing P24, one of the assets that Paolo mentioned we own, which is one of the leaders in Poland with one-click checkout. Hit the checkout page, hit Tab. You'll receive a code, and it'll auto-fill it, and then you're done.
What's been really exciting for me to watch with the local team is that despite post-COVID, our volumes are growing at nearly three times the market rate in the first half of the year. That's not just from market share gains versus competition. This is by opening up entire new sectors of the economy into e-Com. My favorite example on this one is PKP, which is an intercity, intramunicipal transit authority. You've probably used it if you've ever traveled in Poland. There's a very deep societal good, but there's also a really exciting benefit we've created. I'll start with the societal good and then the benefit. When the war started on the Ukraine border, there was an influx of about 1.6 million refugees.
One of the fantastic things that happened was offering free transit to allow people to move to get host families. That was offered for free. How do you do that, and how do you make sure there's no abuse? Well, it's a reasonably digitized nation. The people who fled had mobile phones. To be able to download an app and then effectively have free travel but authenticated was enabled by this solution. Moreover, if I ignore the social good and just look at our own interest, for a domestic transit operator, we've increased conversion by 2 percentage points year to date. This launched in January, and this is as of June. 2 percentage points for an intracity rail system is massive. That's free revenue for them. This is not a discretionary good. You're usually traveling to commute or to go see your parents.
Incredibly proud of that number. Final example. This one is a hotel receipt, and the reason I'm showing you a receipt, this is maybe not the most exciting thing you're gonna see today, is to demonstrate the level of deep understanding we need to have. In this case, obviously, there's the hotel name, there's the name of the person. But what's unique about us, specifically in Italy, is the booking reference from the property management system that issued the booking, the check-in and checkout dates, the number of nights that were stayed for, and the fare conditions, in this case, non-refundable. You can imagine pre, intra, and post-COVID, in Italy, most hotels tend to be family-owned, bed and breakfasts or mom-and-pop type operations.
Being able to manage an influx of disputes, an influx of chargebacks from international travelers or even domestic travelers who are going, "Well, I'm sorry I didn't make that booking," or, "My plans changed," created an enormous amount of complexity that they weren't able to handle themselves. For us to create a solution for that specific need that handled a guarantee for the reputation, guarantees for no-shows, et cetera, has meant that we've unlocked an entire segment to come online in Italy. 1,600 hotels, an amazing franchise of 30 ISVs, some of the ones that Matt spoke about, to integrate with us, representing I think 60% of the hotel space in Italy, and not a single chargeback case lost being the advocate for our customers, the merchant.
If I put those things together, using us versus legacy, our customers generate more revenue with less complexity and cost, which is driving our future economics. An average doubling or more of take rate from the same cohort before and after or versus peers coming to Nexi. Couple of quick examples. Bildeler i s a leader in automotive parts in Norway. Not normally what you would think of as a very avant-garde online kind of thing, right? Tires and light bulbs and seat belts and that sort of thing. Their issue was they'd been online for a number of years, but they'd used the default checkout from their webshop provider. By adopting our one-click checkout, bringing basically half the Norwegian population into their doorstep, we've increased conversion, i.e., revenue, on EUR 20 million of transaction value by 30% in the first year.
They're pretty happy with us. Second, Tele2 is a leading telco in Sweden. You might recall Sweden also has a plethora of different ways to pay. They, for procurement and purchasing power reasons, had multiple providers. The issue was that the payments didn't always reconcile either on time or at all to bills or top-ups or whatnot. By using us, a single deep integration to all methods of payment, a single reconciliation, a single settlement, that unlocked their back office, and their support calls related to payments have dropped by half. You can imagine for a telco provider, that's incredibly exciting. How do we do that, and how do we do this at scale? This is the second of three chapters. We have a lot of complexity. This is the dial going up from 8 to 10.
How people behave in a given country. Paolo mentioned local fiscal and regulatory requirements that differ. Currencies. It is not the United States of Europe. Unfortunately, it isn't just the Euro in every country. Things that were meant to drive consistency, like PSD2, are actually driving more complexity. Because if we look at the percentage of volume that goes through something that's not Visa, Mastercard, it's between 60%-80%, depending on the country. If you want to cover 80% of the volume, you need somewhere between five to nine methods of payment. That's an enormous amount of complexity. VAT filing, tax reporting, fraud reporting all vary from country to country and often need to be automated as part of the payment process. Sometimes the requirement's medium level, sometimes it's incredibly high. In the Nordics alone, four countries, four currencies. I always forget this.
That's an incredible amount of cross-border flows that we need to be able to manage. Unfortunately, PSD2 is being implemented in a divergent way, bank by bank, country by country. Rather than flattening the field, it's creating even more complexity for consumers, for shoppers and for merchants. We have a solution at a local level for all of those. The way we do this is by, as Paolo mentioned, not just maintaining, but investing in local front ends. What we're showing here are where the local feature, that's what we're representing in the white, is actually very relevant because it's distinctive, it's a competitive differentiation for that local requirement. At the same time, there's many things, for example, making a payment over SEPA is typically the same across Europe 'cause it's a European standard, and so that's a shared feature.
We use then this layer for anything that's consistent or a new product or proposition that we're developing and then wanna deploy into multiple countries across Europe. For example, the fast checkout or collecting money for APMs. That's a consistent capability across Europe that helps drive scale. This approach is unique 'cause on one extreme you have players who are focused on the purity of a single platform, and that gives tremendous benefits, but it also means that you have to be broad, but shallow. On the other end, you have players who are facing into an enormous amount of complexity from M&A and then looking to drive consolidation. That also works because you create CapEx efficiencies and you focus on a single platform.
As soon as you do the next M&A, you start all over again, and then you're forced to being in the place of offering broad but relatively shallow capabilities. We're incredibly excited by this approach because we've seen it unlock in a relatively capital efficient way, innovation and an example of agility that Paolo mentioned this morning at the front, while building scale and efficiency for common capabilities. It's not just the architecture, it's our people. 'Cause we've got 315 people in country, in the market, in every, element of that design where the local feature is relevant, obsessing over this detail. 'Cause you have to be in the south of Italy to understand how hotels think. You feel it. It's very difficult to do that in a remote center.
We invest on this on the left, but we also enable this with the scale of the digital hub that Paolo mentioned with Nexi Digital, where we currently have over 200 people and are growing to 500 to build the scale. That engineering know-how is fundamental to unlocking this value. That thinking carries its way through into distribution, so sales and partnerships. We've got 350 in-country sales and tech support in e-Com next to the engineers, next to customers who know how to talk to them, know how to support them with their local ecosystem and their local challenges, but then complemented by over 500 people in the teams that Roberto and Matt mentioned earlier. Plus, everything that Roberto mentioned about ISVs applies in e-Com, but even more extreme.
You will have the Shopifys of the world, but at the same time, you have hundreds of local shop platforms who are part of the top 10 of how people do commerce online in Europe. That unlocks one of the most exciting opportunities, which is beyond focusing on the growth opportunity from digital-first merchants in pure play e-Com. Cooperating across and being the experts to help over 2 million SMEs get online over the next few years is a massive cross-selling opportunity for us. Matt's already spoken around the case studies of deep omni-channel and e-Commerce expertise for the mid large corporates. They have a similar footprint.
Our 350 salespeople are in the same countries, co-located with our engineers and our product experts next to our customers, and then supported by over 500 people, where we continue to invest into a sales force that will become about 1,000 people in the medium term. Finally, you're probably familiar with many of these names. I've mentioned Shopify once. Adobe's bought Magento. In most of our footprint, these logos represent 10%-20% of the volume. You have to work with the local platforms who then represent the tail. For the mid-market who do not have the technology expertise, you are also going out to a huge tail of local agencies, local developers, to figure out how to optimize your web shop to sell online in your country, and we work with all of them.
Going deep and understanding these local by nature markets is how we win. Part of the reason you hear the excitement in my voice is this kind of opportunity. In our core markets, we have been outgrowing the market 2x-3x. We've just begun. Somewhere between 5%-20% of our Merchant base is cross-sold, e-Commerce or omni-channel. We have a huge franchise to sell into with a huge, strong starting point. When we've launched new solutions, I took you through the one-click checkout example, the example in Poland of the one-click payment method, and the hotel example in Italy. They're already a meaningful contributor to our revenue, so we've had a quietly nice fast start to get traction in the market, and they're growing incredibly quick.
To sum up, not only is it large and fragmented, but we have a special opportunity because the mid-market is a multi-billion Euro revenue pool in our footprint with relatively low competitive intensity, mostly made up of local players. We have a privileged position because we are already there. We are already at scale on product, on engineering, on sales, support, and distribution with partners. This is our opportunity. Our future focus is all about developing these local propositions, while bullet two, enabling scale while having the local presence and local architectures, and then unlocking the full cross-selling opportunity. I think I'll pass back to Paolo to help sum up the Merchant Solutions area. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Omar. Thank you, Roberto. Thank you, Matt. As you've seen, we made a very explicit and conscious choice in these verticals to give you content. Maybe a bit differently from others, but we really wanted, you know, to give you at least, you know, a little bit of clarity, given the time available of what we do, what we do every day, what we plan to do as well, through the people that are actually doing it. Sometimes you also feel the excitement when we talk about specific product features or cases, and that's the way it is, and I think it's good.
Now, continuing along the same lines, the third deep dive and last deep dive of the morning is with winning in Issuing Solutions. I will call on stage Torsten Hagen Jørgensen. Torsten, welcome. Alessandro Piccioni. Torsten is leading the Issuing Solutions activities of Nets and will take with the new year the leadership across the Group for the space. Alessandro actually is leading the marketing activity within Italy for issuing and clearly is one of our best experts when it comes to beyond processing into advanced digital issuing and Payments-as-a-Service. That is going to be a big topic for them. The floor is yours.
Thank you, Paolo. Welcome to all of you for the deep dive of Issuing Solutions. I can assure you that Alessandro and I are very excited for the opportunity to talk about Issuing Solutions and, of course, not least winning in Issuing Solutions. We will do it in two steps. First, we will share with you how we view the market of issuing, how we are positioned, why we are competitive, why we will win, and we will then shift to the four different type of strategies we will apply in actually executing on it and winning more business. I will not go through the details here because then I will repeat myself. Let's start on the market view and share with you a few important points.
The first is tapping into what you have heard about several times today from Paolo and from our MS Merchant Solutions team. It is the combination of local entrenchment and scale. It's the same in Issuing business. We have two super geographic strongholds in Issuing business, one in Nordics and one in Italy. We are deeply locally entrenched, meaning super defendable positions and capability hubs. We have jointly, and each of us, developed in the Nordics and in Italy, unique capabilities that are ready to be exported to the rest of Europe. We are already present in rest of Europe. A great synergy is that we have sufficient presence and a challenger, strong challenger position in most of the markets that we want to address. We are basically already today where we want to be in terms of presence and exposure to markets.
We are already also today, we are big business. We have financial scale at EUR 1 billion business, and we have great operational scale. We are today managing 170 million cards on very few, very modern and scalable platforms, offering us the opportunity to offer existing customers and new customers to tap on to scale immediately, scale benefits. Talking about customers, our starting point is also unique in the way that we already have a great customer base, cutting across all the possible segments of banks, from the most international and large banks and all the way to digital native banks. We are there. We are engaged with all these names.
What is however more unique is the fact that we are not only serving banks, we are also owning and operating and serving three domestic schemes. One in Denmark, which we actually own, one in Norway, and one in Italy. It's a unique capability, and it's advantage of being able to serve banks also having these capabilities. Finally, we are already also exposed to non-bank issuers, corporates, fintechs, very much in the fuel and mobility area, which is also a very interesting, vertical. I think it's fair to say that our customers are happy, and happy customers are loyal customers, and that's, of course, a key foundational strength. We are exposed. We have the customers, we have the presence.
If you look on the far left-hand side, the flags, these are the markets that we are either deeply in or a challenger in. We are exposed to these markets. They all offer healthy growth because they are supported by strong underlying trends. The biggest trends more or less across all the regions, Paolo talked about it's from cash to card. Nordic represents a high level that is more than two times the rest of Europe. Who do not believe that rest of Europe wants to go there? It goes for banks, it goes for schemes, everybody wants to go digital. Actually, even in the Nordic markets, where we have very high card penetration, because of the high level of digitalization, you see an underlying trend that are a continued expansion of more customer journeys turning digital with payments embedded.
The underlying growth we are exposed to is strong and stable and supported by these trends. We want to win more business. If you want to win more business, it's very good that there are a lot of names out there, many banks, many issuers. Most of them are known to us, but for many there is a great potential. That is what we have tried to show on the far right-hand side. The gray one, that is where we already today have a very strong position. This is where we will capture one of the biggest revenue synergies of the combination because we have far more products today than we had individually before, and they're ready to be crossed and upsell to existing customers. One key driver. The green one shows the big opportunity space we have.
Because even though we are strongly present in many of these markets in Europe, we have a big opportunity to win more. Why do we think we can win more in the markets where we are and we can sell more to our customers? Well, it's because I think we have jointly, and I'm happy to argue this, but I will say being around looking in the market for quite some time, we have the most comprehensive offering, and I will also say we have the most advanced offering. That is, of course, also a very good starting point. Let me spend a few minutes on this slide. I will not be too long, Paolo, but I will spend a few minutes on this one. Paolo thinks I'm a little too long on this slide, but it's important.
If we start with this is what people typically think about of Issuing business. This is your traditional business of issuing processing. This is helping banks processing all your card transactions, and it's helping banks managing all the cards they have issued to you in its simplicity. In this space, the key KPIs are that you are scalable, that you are flexible, you are open technology. This actually is the space where the rat race is on technology, your technology stack. You have to have the most modern stack to convince the customers that you can deliver scale, and you have openness, so you can add more services on top. I would argue in this specific space, the traditional space, we are four to five years ahead technology-wise of the traditional players. That's good.
Which is also very good is that because it's built open, it's easy for us to add all kind of additional services. The traditional services in traditional Issuing business, the biggest areas would typically be anti-fraud. Because of course, when we do much more card transaction, the risk of fraud goes up. We help banks with that. e-Com booster, we help that you are secure when you trade online. Dispute management, we help the banks help you when you want to dispute a card transaction. What is mainly important here from a competitive point of view is that we have more offerings that are more available than the traditional players, than the average traditional player. But we also have some of them, I think we have an edge, a competitive edge. We have CVM, a product developed in Italy, live in Italy.
It's a product we have already tested with many other customers out in Europe, and there's a huge appetite for this. I will not talk about the product because Alessandro will come back and talk more about the CVM product. There's a richness of services that are better than market, and there's an availability that are better, and they are all ready. It's just about doing it, you can say. Also reason for believing in winning more business. The last one is also. I will have to look to Alessandro. Payment-as-a-Service is a concept that of course is known. My belief is looking into it from a Nordic international point of view is, it's a super compelling offering. It's live in Italy, and it's also ready to be exported.
Here, we will hear more, but here is the advantage is it can both come as a package, and it can come modular. You can move your existing customer into these services, or you can move certain potential customers directly to Payments-as-a-Service. If I should try to add up all of the three pillars of growth, we are there, we are strong, we have competitive advantages in each of them. The even more important thing is when we position ourselves towards competition, because of course there's competition out there. No traditional player have the strength of having CVM and Payments-as-a-Service modules they can add to the offering. No Payments-as-a-Service provider out there has the depth and insight in payments.
Also as a shareholder, now I'm not an expert in stocks out there, but I think you will have a hard time finding one provider that are equally strong in both, you can say, the traditional space and the Payments-as-a-Service space. This is why it takes a little bit of time, Paolo, because if you look on the bottom of this, there's another very important thing in this one. A call-out Paolo also said, the repositioning point. What do we mean by repositioning? Now then we have to go to the very bottom of the page, value per card. It is so that our customer served mainly to the left-hand side versus a customer served Payments-as-a-service wise. On revenue per card, we are talking about a multiple of 2x-3x.
EBITDA per card, we are talking about a multiplier of four to six times. Imagine that we, over time, not only will go straight to new type of segments, like smaller banks and corporate and fintechs, go straight to Payments-as-a-Service, but also slowly and carefully migrate our positioning towards traditional issuers from being a technical processor to a partner in solving for their real concern. Because what is the real concern of banks today? That's not cost per se. That is to be disrupted in their customer interface. It's increasingly on revenue and NPS. You can imagine for margin reasons why that is a much better position to be in as a partner to your customers than the other part of it. This repositioning is a key driver for more value also. If we try to put this into
This was more of the market view, why we think we are winning and can win more. If you put it into action, how will it look? If you remind yourself, we had digital processing, value-added services, and Payments-as-a-Service. These are the three pillars. You will find all of them in the strategy. Digital processing, value-added services, Payments-as-a-Service. The strategy obviously built on these three pillars of growth. The first important, you can say, dimension is win more customers. As we have argued, we have a competitive edge in digital processing. We can win more customers in the traditional space, and we have the modern platform with lower cost to serve. We can also expand into new customers that cannot really be well covered by our competitive offering up here.
Even though it's the most modern one, it's not really catering cost to serve wise for smaller banks, for fintechs and corporate. comes Payments-as-a-Service. Ready to be exported to rest of Europe, we will win new customer on that platform. there is the obvious possibility when we talked about the richness of the combined offering we have in terms of additional services. jointly, we have far more than we had before. it's obvious to go back to existing customers and start selling each other's products, or now we are only one. a lot of possibilities to sell value-added services. A lot of possibilities also to sell Payments-as-a-Service to existing Italian customers and increasingly to international customers. this is the way we will do it. We have the three pillars of growth.
We have the four buckets of, you can say, strategy direction that will take us to deliver. Bernardo mentioned mid- to high single-digit growth. This is the way we will deliver it. We are confident with what I have just said, we can do it. To convince you even more, we will now double-click on each of these. I will cover a bit more on the top part, and then I will, as part of digital value-added services, I will hand over to Alessandro that will take it from there on CVM and explain to you the beauty of Payments-as-a-Service. Let's start with what I want to highlight. I have claimed that we are winning in digital processing.
The first slide is actually more telling about what is happening as we speak in the space of winning more business with traditional banks, with our most modern solutions. We are winning. It's not a roadmap thing or a strategy. It's happening. Recently we have across different geographies, different issuers, slightly different type of solutions. We have won EUR 30 million of incremental annual revenue. Even better, we have been out there for quite some time. Now with combined force, we have more than 180 active dialogues with customers across Europe for winning more business. We have highlighted here seven we are particularly focused on at the moment. They also cut across geographies and a little the scope definition.
Just to put in perspective, winning these seven would generate around close to EUR 100 million of annual recurrent revenue. We have a lot of other prospects. Even in this space, a lot of additional growth is out there, not depending on market growth, just by our ability to win more business. I've talked many times about our modern platform, and I'm not a technician myself, so I will not go deep in this. We truly believe by testing in the market, not because I say so, customers telling us this solution is clearly future-proof and ahead of what we see in the market. We want this. We call it the Uni platform. The reason why I like it is that it is, as I said, built modern technology.
It caters for all the needs you know of, all the buzzwords you know of when you have modern technology versus legacy technology, real-time, cater for all type of processing, pre-integrated to schemes, what have you, all API, cloud-enabled, modular, what have you, four, five years ahead. The good thing is this is neither a roadmap thing. It's live, it's in production. We have some of our biggest and most important Nordic customers on the platform already. Not only the traditional banks are on these platforms. What are the most demanding type of customer you know of out there? This is when some very ambitious small bank, or it's a bank on paper, they show up in our office. A couple of years ago, they were called Lunar. Very ambitious. They want to be a digital-only neobank.
They would scale fast to rest of the Nordics. Nordics, as you remind, is already very digital. They wanted still a competitive edge. They went straight to this platform. That was their biggest wish. They were the first one on the platform, and they were the most demanding type of customer you can imagine. It was in a shootout with many other providers. We want this customer. I will not go in all kinds of details with this customer. They're still out there. They have been very successful in expanding. You can imagine a customer comes in the door with some PowerPoint slides and wanting us to support them basically in all possible angles to be up and running very fast.
From some PowerPoint slides to fully in the market, seven months, which I think was a huge heavy lift for us, a big learning, super proud of this. It's just a testimony of that it's not only me saying that this platform we have is superior in the market. As I said, when you have the customer on your platform, especially on a modern platform, it's quite easy to add more modules, more services. We have talked about some of the traditional services, customer support, fraud, digital dispute. Obviously, we are there. Some of them we have quite competitive edges. We have all started to trade more in e-Com. PSD2 demanded much higher security. Together, we have been able to combine into a truly strong solution, tapping into 50% type of growth in this space.
Rapyd, synergy fantastic solution, e-Com booster we call it. As customers, banks are mainly obsessed now with seamless experiences. We are also jointly able to provide the market much faster with an even better onboarding solution. Finally, and now, we are ready to talk about the fantastic product of CVM, great appetite out there, already working in Italy, and to talk more about the Payments-as-a-Service platform. Here there's no one better than Alessandro. To you, Alessandro.
Thank you, Torsten, and good morning, everyone. With the rise of fintechs and neobanks, and with competition becoming fiercer for new clients, and therefore more expensive, generating more value from the existing customer base has become a very important profitability driver for our partner banks. That's when CVM comes into play. In a nutshell, CVM is a data-driven practice that increases customers' lifetime value. It plays a crucial role in developing the business with existing customers and in turn in increasing share of wallet, revenues, and margins. Our CVM, Nexi CVM, comes as a fully managed solution as a service, and is based on payments and the related associated big data. It includes three main elements. The first one is are modules for long-term engagement and customer loyalty.
Secondly, a catalog of multi-channel journeys that cover the entire customer life cycle from acquisition to churn. A series of data-driven and data science solutions to better understand the customer's behavior and in turn act accordingly. We have served with our CVM dozens and dozens of banks in Italy over the years, either as a standalone module or as part of a more comprehensive proposition that I will drive you through in a minute. Today we would like to focus on one of the most recent and most important customer success here in CVM. In fact, since 2021, we have been serving Intesa Sanpaolo with our CVM, one of the largest European banks, as you certainly know.
Intesa already has a very powerful and well-articulated engagement program, but still, they wanted to increase daily customer interaction through real-time engagement, and in turn, increase conversion rates and NPS and customer satisfaction. We provided them with a transactional instant win tool that basically allows the bank to create multiple algorithm-based mechanics to engage with customers with any card, credit, debit, prepaid, anytime and anywhere a client executes a payment. The implementation lasted circa six months, just less than six months from design to go live, and it's been active now for almost a year with successful results, as you can see by the most significant KPIs are highlighted here. This is a testimony to our ability to also serve very, very large banks with value-added services and products and our ability to bring it abroad.
Shifting gear now and moving to the second part of our strategy, and that is how we serve mid, small-tier banks as well as corporates and fintechs with our Payments-as-a-Service solution. Torsten drove us through the first two pillars of our product and services proposition. That is a state-of-the-art digital processing and a modular offer that covers the entire range of activities of the issuing value chain. We will now talk about Payments-as-a-Service or co-issuing proposition, whereby Nexi offers a comprehensive portfolio of products and services ranging from consumer to commercial, including credit, debit, prepaid cards, as well as several mobile and digital properties. Think of web portals, mobile apps, mobile payments, and an all-inclusive go-to-market suite. This offer has characterized Nexi issuing activity in Italy, and we are ready now to expand it internationally.
In the Payments-as-a-Service proposition, we basically offer a turnkey end-to-end solution that cover the full spectrum of the value chain, starting with processing and including the most traditional, activities, switching, clearing, card management systems to operations with hard activities such as card creation, personalization and delivery, but mostly with data-driven ones. Think of, anti-fraud, advanced anti-fraud and dispute management or e-Com booster, also leveraging our role as both an issuer and an acquirer, which is a uniqueness in this market. Obviously, products and services that I just mentioned, we actually cover also the scheme management from incentives to mandates. The customer value management that integrated here in a more comprehensive solution is even more effective. We design and execute, marketing and communication campaigns on behalf of our clients. The advantages of this model are plenty.
From a top-line perspective, we are able to deliver a state-of-the-art innovation in a perfect time to market. Also then using data-driven tools, as said, to extract more value from current customer bases. From a cost perspective, we obviously share our economies of scale, that range from operations to schemes, from processing to digital campaigning, but we also ensure service quality and stability as proven over the years, and we reduce overhead and complexity that are a very important burden in this kind of business. This holds true, obviously, for banks, but even more for fintechs and corporates that do not have the same scale, capacity, and experience. With this model, we have served and we are serving more than 150 banks in Italy, ranging from large multinational Groups and their subsidiaries in Italy, such as Crédit Agricole or Allianz and others.
Digital native banks, think of Mediolanum, CheBanca!, illimity most recently. This is a testimony, we think, to our ability to continuously innovate and generate competitive advantage for our partner banks that goes well beyond the mere sharing of costs or economies of scale. We offer this. In this model, we offer the full range of issuing products, credit, debit, prepaid. Nexi has historically been very, very strong in credit. We further consolidated this in recent years. Today I would like to spend a couple of minutes on debit. Debit has thrived. Nexi Debit has thrived in recent years, recording a triple digit growth since 2019, and reaching more than 2 million cards at the end of last year.
Nexi Debit has become the card of choice for everyday spending in Italy, thanks to the advanced features that largely overcome the pitfalls of previous products in the market. From international to online usage, we have seen a very rapid volume pick up, with great customer satisfaction among consumers, as you can see from very high NPS reported here. Debit is very important also because from a profitability perspective in its business fashion, that is debit for SMEs, professionals, has been a profitability driver and a recovery driver for the entire payment ecosystem, thanks to higher interchange fees and higher volumes of spending.
We wouldn't have been able to make this number also on debit if we weren't able to upgrade some of the businesses, some of the banks' businesses to a higher value-added model, such as Payments-as-a-Service. Here comes one of the most important examples in this. CheBanca! has been a very important client of ours for years on the most traditional part of the business that is processing and some adjacent VAS. Most recently, they have decided to upgrade their model to Payments-as-a-Service to take full advantage of our end-to-end turnkey proposition. In just over nine months, not only were we able to successfully migrate 650,000 cards in the back book, but we were also able to integrate with their front ends to provide our digital capabilities in a full API mode.
With CheBanca!, we have obviously generated a lot of value for Nexi and for the bank, while paving the way for further collaboration on product innovation and go to market. As said, we are now ready to bring this model internationally, to expand this model internationally. As we speak, our engineers are actually working on assembling a best of breed and state-of-the-art product platform that relies on all the assets, skills, and capabilities that we have just discussed. Fully API based, the platform will be natively multi-country, but will rely on a single processing backbone and standardized modules. That speaks to the competitive advantage that can give Nexi in terms of efficiency and fast go to market.
The platform can be used self-service in the case of more sophisticated clients, think of some corporates or fintechs, but it can also be used as the core for a more traditional tailor-made approach when the size and the nature of the client allows. Think of mid-tier or regional banks. We already have our first client onb oard. GoHenry, that some of you may know, is a financial education app based on cards, helping six to 18-year-olds master their money skills. With over 2 million clients across the U.K. and the U.S., is actually one of the most important players in this segment. GoHenry is an important client for us because it's a perfect client for a Payments-as-a-Service proposition and a pro platform such as the one that I've just mentioned in terms of scale, fast growth rates, sophistication, and multi-country footprint.
We will serve them with this platform and in time also with acquiring services. As they share the same mission and passion for younger generations, we will in turn help GoHenry also with our experience drawn from the 1.2 million customers onboarded on the app over the years. With this, I'm giving it back to Torsten for closing remarks on digital issuing.
Thank you, Alessandro. Yes, quick recap. This was the one I jumped in the beginning. We have been through how we view the market and how we will do this. I think we have conveyed, or I believe we have conveyed, we are confident that we have, we are in the markets, we have the presence. We have the engagement with all the customers we need to execute this strategy. We are basically not reliant on a lot of more customers. We are where we want to be. We have the customers we want. We also have the offering we want. We have the most comprehensive and the richest offering, I think, available out there. Why want more? It's not a roadmap thing. It's live in Italy, live in Nordic, live in international. Now it is bringing it to more customers.
The four-pillar strategy, we are already winning business in digital processing. We have a super-rich, which is part of synergy, a super-rich portfolio of additional service. It's just a matter of selling more of them to existing customers. We have a Payments-as-a-Service platform that cater for another segment where we basically today have a big white space outside Italy, the corporates and the fintechs. It's the richest, and it's built on the most knowledge about payment. We have what is needed in terms of customers, market, and products. We have the momentum in doing it, and that's why we are so confident that we are winning business, and we will win more business. With that, we have concluded the winning in Issuing Solutions.
We have concluded all the deep dive business reviews, and we are a little behind, but I hope it was worth it. We are so engaged, as you can hear, in our business. We will have a break now, and I think we offer 15 minutes, so meaning back around 12:25 P.M. , I guess. Is that possible? Around that. Thank you.
Very good. Thank you for coming back on time. We are a bit late, but hopefully we use the time effectively in a useful way. I will literally spend one second on recapping the messages, but it's gonna be literally one second. What we plan to do is basically to extend the Q&A session to 1:15 P.M. We'll need to stop it at 1:15 P.M., because otherwise it gets really too long for many of you, and I'm sure that you have other commitments as well. Obviously, myself, Bernardo, Stefania, the entire team is available to follow up on any questions you may have in the coming days and weeks. Whatever we cannot answer to this morning, we're gonna be available for that.
We will be having three mics around the room, so if you can just raise your hand so that they can come to you. As usual, if you can just introduce yourself for the people that are following us from the streaming. We will also receive a few questions from the ones that are not here in person from the screen, so I will also have to take a few of them as well. Well, I mean, I think we don't need to add more to the content, I think. At the end of the day, we've been reiterating three very simple messages across all the verticals as well.
You know, we really are convinced of being a very attractive set of markets characterized by complexity, fragmentation, which is great for us, but also long-term strong growth. In these markets, we are well-positioned across, if you like, the different businesses we operate in. Our strategy, you know, is clearly differentiated with this very, very clear concept of being the best of the combination of scale and in market customer entrenchment and proximity, combined with the individual growth strategies of and multiplied with operating leverage and the synergies that we are delivering. Third and last, very clear message, strong profitable growth in cash is necessary, but I think we can start with our Q&A, and most importantly, with your questions. The mic is going around, so whoever takes the mic first can go. Go, please.
Hi, thank you for taking my question. I'm [audio distortion] from ODDO BHF. My first question would be on competition, and your comments around the competition from online players like Adyen or Stripe. Is it accelerating, compared to one year ago? Is it pretty much the same? Maybe another comment or in what context you think you are better positioned than them? In what context maybe they are better positioned than you? Thank you very much.
Thank you for the question, which is a question that we get very often. We did try to answer to that question as much as possible today. I think that the competition that we see with them, you know, is evolving, but honestly, very much in line with our expectations. They are trying to enter more and more geographies over time and expand over time. The competitive dynamic is very simple and consistent in what we said before. You know, they are strong and successful when it comes to very, you know, global players that normally have one platform that fits, you know, the needs of different geographies and so on and so forth.
We win with them, and we defend ourselves, but we also win with them whenever being local is becoming more and more important. That's exactly the dynamic that you heard from both Roberto and Matt, but also Omar when it comes to e-Commerce. We see that continuing. They're trying to make a bit more inroads on physical commerce, but actually for now, at least, we see us, you know, playing very, very well. In some cases, it goes also the other way around. We win new digital commerce business thanks to the characteristics that were mentioned before.
Thank you. It's James Goodman from Barclays. Thank you for the presentations. First one for me, please, on the 9% top line. It's an encouraging, ambitious target for the coming years, particularly in the context of some of the uncertainties that we see out there at the moment. For me, one of the most crucial things that you laid out was the geographic growth, showing that the DACH and Poland region was going to grow mid-20%s, and that the others were mid- to high-single-digit . I wondered if you could speak to your confidence in that and bring together some of the different parts of the presentations we've seen. You know, to what extent does that rely on market share gains to achieve that rate of growth in Germany?
A clarification just linked to the growth in Germany. You've classified Ratepay as held for sale today. I recall that in the past it's been a very fast-growing asset. It's contributed to the growth rate of the overall business. Wondered if you could talk to your decision to classify that as held for sale and to make up for any shortfall in growth as a consequence. Thank you.
Yeah. Let me try to give a high level answer, and then, if necessary, Bernardo just come in. Listen, the way we always do our projections, our forecasts, is always the same. We start from expected market growth, which obviously takes into account also the macro, using the best possible estimates that we find around that are the same that you also use. No? On top of it, we plug our initiatives both in terms of products and services, market share, distribution, and so on and so forth. As we combine all of that, we also normally take our own, if I can call it contingency, you know, taking into consideration competitive pressure and pricing, and market consolidation of banks, the different factors that you can imagine.
That's where the 9% is coming from or thereabout. In a sense, at the end of the day, what you're seeing is high single-digit, double-digit growth over the next three years, compounded. Now, the key sources of that growth, to cut a very long story short, are basically three. They've been quite well covered by the team. SMEs, we believe there is a lot of growth for us in SMEs everywhere. It's a mix of market growth, but also market share growth in many markets. Number two, e-Commerce in the mid-segment. I think Omar did cover it very, very well.
Number three, I would say Germany market share, and I would say more in general, DACH market share. I would include also Switzerland together with Germany, where we are having a good acceleration of performance as we speak, and we clearly want to drive it further. That's at the end of the day what gives us confidence, and that's a little bit the same way we've done always our projections. As Bernardo said, now we will be working on the details of 2023, and we'll talk about it when we meet in February. That also obviously will take into account whatever will be the evolution of the macro scenario.
Coming to Ratepay is a business we love, that is led by a very strong team, and that again is doing very well. The key point, no, and you know that, we're going through a strategic review on that led by Omar and Nina, that is the leader of the Ratepay team, is that we are clearly not the best owner of that asset, no? Therefore, going forward, I think it's good for that business to find a better owner and honestly, for us to focus our efforts and capital on what is longer term, more strategic for us.
At the end of the day, we can make it very, very sophisticated, but there are basically 2 points. Number one, this is gonna be evolving more and more toward consumer financing and therefore a business for banks or thereabout. No? I think that especially as we see interest rates going in a direction different from the one of the past, this will become visible. No? Second, and most importantly, which is the strategic reason, at the end of the day, if you think about it, if you are a strong Buy Now Pay Later player, you want to be present on all PSPs, on all gateways. No? Therefore, this dilutes the synergy you can create with your own PSP.
At the same time, if you're a PSP, in order to serve your merchants, a competitive advantage is not having one Buy Now Pay Later method. It's having all of them, all APMs, more in general. If you try to create an advantage across the two, it's very, very difficult and not necessarily be successful because the others will not like it. The other PSPs or the other Buy Now Pay Later player. Therefore, it's very clear that these two businesses over time will be diverging with Buy Now Pay Later getting probably closer and closer to consumer financing. That's the reason. Historically, Ratepay has been a good contributor to our growth.
This year, the commerce market is a bit softer, as you know very well, but it would have been a good contributor of future growth as well. Nevertheless, we really believe that we need to be driven by long-term strategy. Really using our resources at best, focusing our efforts and the capital management on your behalf, where it creates most of economic and strategic value for us. That's the reason why it's there.
Is on?
Yeah.
Justin Forsythe, Credit Suisse. Thank you guys for the time. Really appreciate the detailed conversation here. Have a couple for you. First, I wanted to touch on software-led payments conversation a little bit, and thank you for the detail there. That was pretty cool stuff. In terms of embedded financial services, this is something that we've seen talked about kind of frequently by some of the other players in the market. It kinda feels like something that you've been doing for a long time. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what you see as the opportunity there. In addition, you talked about ISO and ISV partners. I think you talked about them in the Group. Could you point out, you know, how many ISV partners you have as a whole?
Talk, I guess, directionally about wallet share within those ISV partners. My second question was around kind of the local differentiation as it relates to alternative payment methods. Wanted to understand better, you know, the view of that as a differentiator, just given it seems like a lot of providers out there tout that as something that they can provide as well. Like for instance, BANCOMAT, which was one that you harped on quite a bit. Is it that you are in the flow of funds? I caught that point, and that there is a direct integration and processing side that perhaps the others are not doing. Thank you very much.
On the first question, I think Roberto and Omar tried to give as much clarity as possible there. Clearly, you know, these partnerships are evolving more and more from being just distribution partnership to become also product partnerships and, you know, with deeper integration. I think this is something that it was very, very clear in the example of Zucchetti, and we will do it more and more across the Board. If you wish, with Orderbird, we're testing it to the deepest extreme given the fact that we have full control of the company. We believe it will continue in the direction. Therefore, you know, more from distribution into more strategic integration and partnerships.
In terms of share of wallet and so on and so forth, this is not something that we are providing. Normally, you know, the strong ones, again, the example that were given, tend to be exclusive at least de facto, not necessarily formalized, but they tend to be. By the way, this is consistent with this concept of integrating, because they cannot integrate deeply with everybody, and we can also not integrate deeply with everybody. Commenting on the APM, let me underline two things. First of all, it's not really true that everybody has all the APMs available, you know, in general.
If you just list the list of players that want to enter the, you know, Italy or Denmark or Norway or Finland, is not necessarily true that all of them, they have, you know, the relevant APMs locally, number one. Number two, don't forget that once you are at the core of the development of these alternative payment methods, like we are, Dankort, we own. [Bancontact], we run. BANCOMAT, we run. BANCOMAT Pay, we are developing the new platform on behalf of the banks and so on and so forth. Clearly, you have a huge advantage in terms of, you know, the way you can integrate, you know, and evolve it. By the way, you know, you I think you mentioned it in your question.
One thing is having it as a distributor. One other thing is having it deeply integrated where you can also do, you know, the collection, you know. That's the reason why, you know, when we're summarizing, for example, our e-Commerce, our omni-acceptance but also collection propositions, because that's where you can provide a value to the customer but also retain more margin yourself. Let me just close on one point, because when we think about APMs, we always have in mind the debit scheme. Be careful because locally, you know, again, I do the example of Italy, which is the place that I know the best. pagoPA is a local APM. You need to be able to accept public administration payments in-store and online, which is a very Italian specific thing. During COVID, you know, we had very specific implementations to support COVID bonuses.
Now we have very specific implementations of the government support programs, and that thing changes, you know, every year or almost every six months. That's also extremely important. Obviously, for the customers that we want to serve, if you are a mom-and-pop shop, a grocery store, or a supermarket chain, you must have all of that, because otherwise, you know, you're lost, you know. Maybe if you are LVMH and you sell, you know, on the highest street in Milan and Rome and, in the airport, to international crowd is a bit less relevant, but it's not our focus.
Hello? Yeah, can you hear me? I'm over here, Paolo. Alexandre Faure with BNP Paribas Exane. Good afternoon. Thanks for letting me in. Thanks very much for the slides this morning. I've got two questions, one for each of you, I suppose. Firstly, Paolo, in your slides, you showed that the pace of cash displacement accelerated with COVID to about 2 points a year, and you make that assumption that this pace remains unchanged for the foreseeable future and does not go back to pre-COVID levels. I'm just wondering what makes you think that, and if you've got hard data to back this up, or it's just conviction more than anything else. Second question to Bernardo, perhaps. You mentioned this at least 7% growth for 2023, you know, that was coming.
Just wondering if you could unpack this number for us a little bit, what come from nominal consumption growth, cash displacement, share gains. You talked a lot about that. Just trying to understand the assumptions you're making behind that. Thank you very much.
Let me start with your question, then I will hand over to Bernardo, even if actually 2023 is not our focus as it has, as Bernardo said very well, but I don't know if he wants to comment further. On your first point, which is obviously extremely important. Listen, I think we did the best we could in putting our core beliefs into those projections. To be very clear, it's not a top-down blunt, you know, assumption. It's market by market, you know, so we went through every single one of our markets, you know, combining our external estimates with what we see today happening, what we have observed during COVID and also pre-COVID.
That's basically at the end of the day, what comes out as aggregation of this bottom-up analysis. The only thing that I would add is that in the past, you know, whenever we did our estimates for budget or even at IPO, you know, in terms of a growth of the market, we've always been surprised with stronger speed of penetration. Never lower. No, I hope this is not the first time, but that's actually the mindset that we have applied.
Well, I mean, I think the second question is really tied to the first question you asked Paolo. Obviously, when we project earnings growth, we look at those for revenue growth, because that was the question. We look at those three drivers that I mentioned when I was presenting our growth plan. Which are, you know, volume growth, which is about the secular shift of cash to card payments, and it's about increased card penetration. In Italy, we said 3%-4% per annum compared to the past, which was around about 2%. In Germany, it's whatever, 2%-2.5%, and so on and so forth.
We look at each market we operate in and project an increased level of cash penetration, as well as looking at overall how much disposable income there is for consumers to spend as cash, so on and so forth. That's the volume growth piece. We have the install base growth, which is more subscription-like, but that grows as well, thanks to some of the initiatives to grow customers, grow the overall payments ecosystem we have out there. I mean, we don't give you precise targets. I think you can do the math and look at, you know, 60% of our revenues is coming from volumes. You have seen historically where volumes are growing. We give you every quarter an update as to how volumes are performing.
That would explain 60% of the growth, and you need to make assumptions on the remaining 40%. We have given you details with regard to synergies. Ultimately, obviously, most of the growth comes from volumes, as you would expect.
Yeah. Hello, Sébastien from Kepler Cheuvreux. First of all, on short term, have you seen any slowdown in volume trends since the summer because of tougher macroeconomic conditions? First one. Second one, we have seen the large payment service providers in the U.S. accelerating software-led offering, notably Fiserv with Clover and so on, to tackle with stronger competition with the large commerce platform. Is this something that Nexi could also follow in the longer term, developing your own software solution? Thank you.
Let me start actually from the second and reconnect what I said before. The evolution that you see in Europe on this front of software payment conversions is very different in terms of pacing, in terms of speed, compared to what you see in the U.S. We believe it will also be much more difficult because of the fragmentation of the markets we are in, as we have reiterated several times. The core of our strategy is actually going for partnerships. By the way, even the global American players, you know, they have, you know, the two strategies at the same time trying to integrate, you know, partnerships, but at the same time, in some cases, in some verticals, developing their own integrated solutions.
You know, our view is that the core strategy is about partnership, but with more and more, as I said, product integration over time. We want to go for it starting from the sectors where this is the most relevant because honestly, if you take the entire grocery or general retail sector, especially in markets that are SME-centric, this convergence is irrelevant, you know. If you take restaurants, it's more relevant. Actually, it's definitely very relevant. Then the other sectors are somewhere in between. Our core current focus is partnerships. We have this Orderbird that will be used as, you know, a test in the most relevant segment that is restaurants. Then actually we'll evolve it from there. On the volume.
Listen, obviously, I personally wait for the weekly volumes every week and ask the team when I don't see them and so on and so forth. For now, we've not seen any major change of trend or any major, you know, deterioration versus what our expectations were. Different dynamics market by market, you know, but for now, we see it quite resilient, you know, to what we all read and see out there. Now, how much of it, you know, is because inflation is compensating real underlying, you know, consumption slowdown, it's impossible to say. We ran all possible analysis. If you look at it, you know, there is a little bit of an increase of the average ticket size, which is in counter tendency to the past.
Even if, you know, there is also a mix of what people buy that is going back to normal. For example, travelers come back. Now, normally, travelers average bigger ticket size. It's very difficult to understand it, but for now, this is what we see. By the way, also talking to our friends from the banks and so on and so forth, what they see. For now, this seems to be okay-ish, at least. I believe, personally, October, November are the key months because I think that everybody had a good summer, and we had a good summer with tourism coming back, travel. I think people going out. Restaurants are growing 50% versus pre-COVID, okay? Basic consumption went well.
I think the recovery from discretionary consumption has never been exciting. Went back to positive, but it's never been super exciting, and it's remaining like that. I think that now that, you know, people receive the bill, the energy bills and so on and so forth, I think that's gonna be a little bit the moment of truth. That said, as I think Bernardo mentioned, as well, historically, you know, we've seen this business being structurally quite resilient, you know? Not zero impact. I'm not saying that.
When you're sitting on a volume that by itself, you know, grows, you know, high single digit, double digit, 10%, whatever it is, you know, 1 percentage points-2 percentage points of slower, you know, growth of consumption obviously has some impact but doesn't change the shape of the curve, which is also what we observed historically.
Good afternoon, Paolo and Bernardo. Thank you to take my question. Antonin Baudry from HSBC. Two questions. My first one is about the 2025 targets. Will it be possible to have more granularity of the top-line growth during the plan, within the plan? Do you expect a regular acceleration year-after-year? On the same, on the recognition of the cost synergies, do you expect probably more at the beginning and less at the end? How do you see the evolutions of margins within the plan? On my second questions are on the cost of debt. Do you expect an increase of the cost of debt during the plan to support your +20% EPS growth? Which kind of cost of debt you're expecting 2025? On the same on the tax rate.
Thank you very much.
Bernardo, will you take both of them?
Yeah. Or three, maybe.
Go.
I think without giving you a year-by-year guidance, because that's not the intention, and by the way, we didn't give you guidance for 2023, as we've repeated. We've said, you know, we've shared our preliminary thoughts, and we will give you that guidance in February of how we look at 2023, and we've given you, given the confidence we have and the predictability of our business, an indication that we expect it to grow similarly to, like 2022 did and given you a floor of 7%. Now, you know, even if we were to guide you in February to that floor, that 9% CAGR would hold true for us, which means that if you look in the latter years of the plan, we'd expect growth to be higher than that.
I think I'll leave it at that. I mean, I think, you know, this is a capital markets day, not an earnings call or a 2023 guidance call. With regard to synergies, we've given you, I hope, significant detail, which, you know, should highlight how much focus we put into extracting these synergies. We said this year we will generate approximately EUR 105 million of cash synergies. We've said these will grow to EUR 365 million in 2025. I think it's fair to say that cost synergies will be more linear and, you know, more front-loaded than revenue synergies. I think I'm not giving away any kind of secret here. We've given you what the split is.
We've already started to generate revenue synergies this year, which is good news one year into the mergers. Those will grow over time, but you have the splits there. With regards to debt, I mean, even during the coffee break, there's a lot of questions on that, and we're clearly in the market today with a liability management exercise, which I hope is perceived by BB issuer like we are as a show of comfort and strength with regards to our capital base. Our cost of debt on a weighted average basis is around 160 basis points on 1.6%, we shared that.
Over time, as we get to 2025, with rates rising, we expect that average cost of debt for us to be just north of 2%, 2.3%, 2.4%. That is before we choose to deploy our capital in one way or another, that EUR 3 billion of excess cash, it may well be lower than that. In general, I don't think, you know, these are numbers that should get anyone particularly worried. You know, clearly, if we project our gross debt forever in a forever rising rate environment, if we don't pay it down, at some point that will be a material amount.
In terms of the plan horizon, we have, following today's liability management exercise, we will have about EUR 1 billion, just north of EUR 1 billion maturing between now and 2025, and we'll choose whether to pay it down or to refinance it. Even if we were to refinance it, I think we've proven today with the indication we gave you of our borrowing costs for new funds, it's broadly speaking in line with what it was before the rate environment kicked in. In general, I would say that, you know, I'm not particularly worried with regards to either refinancing or cost of debt, and I would, you know, hope you see it the same way.
Thank you. Hannes Leitner from Jefferies. I have also two questions. The first one is on the pricing dynamics. What do you have baked in in your models?
Sorry. Tax rate. I forgot that. Sorry about that. It just came back to mind.
You should think of it on a run rate basis as the way, at least the way we plan for it, is around 33%. Clearly, tax rates vary, you know, there's no such thing as United States of Europe, et cetera, et cetera. Every country has its own tax rate. On average, the blended average for us should be 33%. Now, the implied tax rate in our P&L might differ in the short term. This year, it might be higher than that because some of the countries where we booked some of those or many of those restructuring costs basically have a lower average tax rate. The weighted average changes in the short term because of this reason. Overall, if you were to project, think 33%. Sorry, Hannes.
Back to pricing.
Okay, I'm back. The first part of the question is around pricing dynamics. You mentioned travel has come back, different basket sizes. What is your projection going forward? Then also thinking about the e-Commerce mid-market SME initiative, you talked about customer acquisition cost of EUR 200 in the e-Commerce space. Maybe you can talk us through the other thought process. Do you expect an increase in customer acquisition costs as competition is rising for the same customer Group? Then the second question is around M&A.
Third question.
Oh, third. The first one was pricing in general. The third question is around M&A. Can you maybe frame the market in terms of opportunity, in terms of Merchant books, or other plans?
Okay. Let me... I'll remember, I remember them. Pricing, well, honestly, we have, at the end of the day, planned as we always do, which is basically include into our plans the known, you know, situations. Now, as you can imagine, we have negotiations and so forth, and whatever we know will be affected by, you know, price reductions and so forth. We factor it directly into the plan, plus we put, you know, on top of it, some expectation of price erosion that is consistent with, you know, the recent past of what we've seen. Honestly, we feel quite comfortable for that. Now, never forget that, in a business where volumes grow, whatever, high single digit, double digit, it's absolutely normal that you have some price erosion.
While we give a mic to Omar to answer the acquisition cost for the mid segment in e-Commerce, let me take the one on M&A, your third point. Listen, I think that this market will continue to offer opportunities from many different points of view. I think we need to realize the fact that this industry is still in the making, if I can put it that way, with a value chain that is still not being adjusted and evolving. Therefore, we believe that this will now continue to offer an open opportunities. As we've done in the past, we'll stay super focused on what is relevant for us to strengthen the strategy. We don't need anything to deliver the strategy to be very clear.
Otherwise, we would have put in. No, we are happy with what we have to deliver the strategy, including, you know, the investments, that we put in the plan already. No? Clearly, you know, we will consider, you know, investments, I would say, mainly Merchant Services that may, you know, accelerate or strengthen, you know, this strategy. Stay very, very focused and disciplined on the KPI, starting from EPS accretion that Bernardo has been explaining. Omar?
Hi. The answer for e-Commerce, I think, has two parts. Where we are cross-selling into SME or LAKA, we're able to effectively piggyback on the customer acquisition costs, right? 'Cause we take those in once, so when Roberto sells in a particular market, that's regardless of product, whether it's terminal acquiring, value-added services, e-Commerce, et cetera. Think of that as an all-in number is probably the best way to think about it. Then for pure-play digital e-Com, because of the highly local nature of the business, and I think the previous question, most of the competition and the competition for digital acquisition is versus local players. Depending on the country, our acquisition costs are similar or materially lower. We're not seeing a war for digital acquisition, not in the last three years, and we're not currently seeing it either.
It tends to be fought out more on the shop platforms, which is someone else's problem.
By the way, Stefania, I don't see questions on the screen coming from the people attending remotely. I don't know if there are any, but just in case they can please shoot them here.
You can continue for now.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Sorry. Two questions, if I may. Firstly, on revenue growth. My question on revenue growth is that in terms of your exposure by market, I mean, Italy is probably the most exciting market in Europe in terms of under-penetration of payments, whereas your reported growth as a company is very similar to other consolidators in Europe who don't have the kind of good exposure that you have in terms of under-penetration of markets. Do you understand why this growth profile is so similar, when you should be very much more differentiated in growth? Secondly, regarding your M&A aspirations from here, in terms of looking at other entities, in terms of buying entities, what is your focus on? Is it focused on geographical exposure within the European market? Is it revenue growth, or is it margin?
On your first point, you're right, Italy is a fantastic market. If you like, the point is that for us, growing market share in Italy is quite difficult. Now, while we have the ambition to grow market share in the other markets. We always need to combine the two things. We are very happy with the portfolio because, now, we expect Italy to continue to provide these, not quite predictable, reliable, strong, profitable growth that will help us to invest, in other geographies. And that's what, at the end of the day, creates our top-line expectation. By the way, you should also look at the business mix, not just the geographical mix when you compare us, with the others.
As far as M&A is concerned, let me just reiterate now the three areas of focus that I mentioned before. Now, further in market consolidation in Merchant Services where we are obviously in strategic markets to begin with, which is what we have been doing in the past, and if at the right price and the right conditions, we will consider again. Second, now potential, you know, market expansion into new European geographies for Merchant Services. Again, not any geography. We have in mind very clearly what are the geographies that might be of our interest. And third, now, specific additional capability of assets that may help us to accelerate or, you know, further enhance delivery of our strategy in the space of e-Com or software.
These are the areas I want to be very, very clear. When it comes, you know, to these spaces, we will not be doing everything. Now, or we're not going to be going after everything, now, because we need to be selective. Now, we will be selective, because it will be just good practice, not just in terms of use of capital on the balance between debt, giving you back money or repaying down debt, but also because of operational focus. Now we need to stay focused as much as we can in making sure that we deliver this plan, which is a very exciting plan with the current assets.
Yes, good morning, Gianmarco Bonacina from Equita. A couple of questions. The first one, if you can provide a little bit more color on your expected growth in the install base. Maybe talk a little bit how much is the incremental price mix effect you talked about the SmartPOS. This is the first topic. The second one about the capital structure. You mentioned that clearly you still are looking for some bolt-on M&A. I was just wondering what's your commitment on the other two buckets. Basically, the leverage and potentially issuing a buyback. Is this something that you are thinking about over time, maybe having a formal buyback like other companies in the space? Thank you.
Bernardo, you want to take that?
Yeah. Maybe also going back to the question you just said a little earlier on growth, right? First, let's provide color with regards to the install base growth. The install base growth does not grow only because the number of POS terminals increases or the number of cards out there increases, because that would mean that revenue base would grow a lot less than what it actually does. A lot of what we do in, you know, the Nexi initiatives or the CVM or the value-added services feeds into this install base growth. When we have a POS terminal, SmartPOS terminal, if we upsell or cross-sell other products and services to that POS terminal, that's where it goes. It doesn't go into the volume growth.
A lot of what we do in that middle column, a lot of the things that my colleagues explained in terms of initiatives, we undertake both on e-Commerce and physical SME fleet that installed base growth. SmartPOS is just one visible example of us upgrading the overall payments infrastructure we have out there in Europe, giving us multiple avenues to further increase that growth. I don't think we should be commenting on the margins we make on an individual product. Clearly, SmartPOS is more valuable to the client and is more profitable for us as a consequence. Just about growth in general, I mean, why don't we grow more given that we're exposed to such a great market in Italy?
I think Paolo alluded to the business mix as well. We have a division in Italy, which is no mystery. He gave you the details earlier, is approximately EUR 300 million in terms of revenues. It's 100% Italian. Once we strip out the Danish business we will sell. That is more of an infrastructure like business, which grows a little less, and that kicks into the mix. Back in July, we provided you an appendix to our presentation. I know I then sound like a sore loser, but I need to compare like to like in terms of revenues with other players that report revenues. We report revenues on a net basis, so net of scheme fees, as I think is right to do, right? Scheme fees grow faster than the market.
If I strip them out, if I don't report my revenues net like some others do, our top line growth will be higher. If you adjust for these things, that's when you square the circle and reconcile the top line growth at Nexi with the fact that we're present in this very attractive market. By the way, then I'll move on to the capital structure. As our largest division grows, Merchant Services, that grows mid-double-digit, I think was the guidance we gave you. As that grows more and more and it becomes bigger and bigger within Nexi, our top line growth will benefit from that over time.
Now, with regards to the capital structure, I think, you know, we try to labor the point that it's having the option which is valuable rather than which of the various alternatives we actually choose to engage in. Now, EUR 2.8 billion is a large amount of cash, excess cash, which gets generated in the next three years. As far as I can see in the market, there aren't a huge number. There are many bolt-on M&A acquisitions. They're all hovering in the EUR 200 million, EUR 300 million, EUR 400 million area. I think there's only a certain amount of capacity companies like Nexi or some of our competitors can carry out in the plan horizon.
Which means, frankly speaking, that there's ample cash generation for us to reinvest in M&A, but also potentially do other things like debt pay down or buybacks. Today, we're not committing to any one of them because we want to retain optionality in order to be able to choose the right strategy at the time based on, you know, those factors which we highlighted in the slide. You know, what is the benefit in terms of EPS accretion? What are a number of other considerations at that time? I think the key point that we would like to drive home is that having that optionality is what really has value.
I think that we also made another important point, putting EPS into our guidance explicitly, which is basically, you know, signaling the fact that at the end of the day, the ultimate KPI that we use to assess what is the best use of capital, now depending on the environment, depending on the opportunities, is also pretty much be that one.
I think, Paolo, you have a question from the webcast. Should I read it for you? As you look to the future, what in this business excites you the most?
As you look to the future, what is the business excites you most? Well, listen, I think we've been talking about it just a moment ago. I think the Italy remains a very exciting place because of how much growth is coming from the market, how much we can do given our strength in the market. I said, you know, from the geographical standpoint, Germany and DACH more generally is a place where we really, you know, see the possibility to deploy all our strength into a market with huge potential for digital payments going forward. Then I think we've been covering the specific market opportunities from the segment point of view, from the product point of view.
I think if you really want to summarize it, SMEs, you know, is an amazing space, well-protected, that will continue to grow strongly in the future. e-Commerce with a very specific focus is gonna be this mid-market and digital issuing, in particular, you know, with its evolution towards actually a product business rather than just a processing business with Payments-as-a-Service. To me, those are, if you like, the top line real opportunities that gets us excited in terms of driving future growth. Obviously, there is a lot of work we will be doing on the cost side and the synergy side. It's all fine because this creates opportunity to expand margins and reinvest into a stronger business.
That's really the portfolio, the one that we did share with you today.
Thank you for a very insightful day. It's Lucas from Goldman Sachs. I have a couple of questions. First one is on your SME strategy. Do you want to become a platform yourself or more of a connect to all the other platforms as a PayTech provider? And on this one, what are the product portfolio gaps that you would like to immediately close with M&A? And then one more regarding the product is, how do you differentiate yourself from big competitors like Adyen and Stripe from the product perspective, not just from the end market perspective?
Let me take the second, and then maybe, Roberto, if you want to help me with the first one now, with this platform versus connection, which is not necessarily 100% clear to me. On the differentiation versus the Adyen of this world, I think we did the best we could to make it very, very clear. We want to be different also from them, not only from them, by best combining scale, and Adyen has scale, with in-market proximity, which is so important in the markets we are in for not only SMEs, but also for e-Com and omni-channel for larger merchants. To be very clear, this strategy applies and works well. We are convinced it works very well.
Not for the global large merchants or for the global e-Commerce platforms. That's not our space. That's not in our plan. We are very happy for Adyen and whoever else wants to go after it. It's fine. Our space, as I said again, is SMEs across the Board, omni-channel, with a specific focus on the ones that are more national and mid-sized and mid e-Commerce, where this combination of scale, strong products and services, and customer proximity really makes the difference for customers, and that's a space where for the others, it's very, very difficult to arrive. The additional point we try to make, when it comes to these other places that from the technology standpoint, we are going consistently with the strategy in a different direction.
Now, we really appreciate, you know, everything they say and the beauty of the one single platform that works everywhere, multi modular, and you know able to serve customers around the continent and so on and so forth. That's all fine for that segment. You know, we prefer you know to stay you know in a different space because if you really want to be serious when it comes to this customer proximity, you need to respond to the need of your you know grocery chain in that is present in Rome, Naples, and Bari, you know. That one has the needs, very specific needs when it comes, for example, to integrating the public administration payments, the latest cashback, the latest payment instrument.
Honestly, if you have a UNI platform that fits all developed, I don't know, in the Netherlands, in California, in India, good luck. Good luck. You cannot do it. That is actually what has happened, for example, during COVID. We had some of these super global players that came back to us during COVID because of the need of implementing certain capabilities that were requiring a very specific focus. We will want to retain that ability and that flexibility to be responsive to the local market needs. But at the same time, we'll create scale, you know, on two fronts. One are the core processing platforms that are sitting behind, obviously infrastructure, but it's obvious.
You know, and also creating these, you know, these Nexi Relay that is actually, you know, a cross-border, cross-business, you know, capability that allow us to reutilize common components to create scale and also velocity in terms of time to market. I think targeting different segments with different strategies and consistently with a different mindset when it comes to technology delivery. Roberto, you want to say a few words on SMEs? Go.
Okay, now it's working. Let me just try and differentiate one second between SME and LAKA. On SME, let me reiterate a little bit what we discussed before. Our main strategy remains to be the partner of choice for platforms, because we believe that we can provide the payment capabilities in a way that is both addressing the local specificities and the sophistication of the product in a way that is unique in our markets. However, we keep the options in certain verticals, as we did with restaurants, with Orderbird, to learn more about the space and having the strategic option right in the future to enter more of this space. As actually some of the American players, as Paolo was mentioning, are doing. In LAKA, different play.
To be successful in that space, you need to be already integrated with the platforms that the LAKA use to manage the store, the omni-channel, the CRM, and then, and so on. This is why we have built these native integration capabilities into our own solutions, to be able to very quickly and very effectively to integrate with the customer platforms.
Thank you, Roberto. It's 1:15 P.M. I really feel guilty in stopping. Let's just take the last two, and then we really need to stop, and then you just come to us whenever you want to follow up, as always.
Thank you. Simonetta Chiriotti, Mediobanca. Paolo, at the beginning of the presentation, you said that we don't have the United States of European payments. Don't you think that the digital Euro could be a step in that direction and could erode a bit of the advantage of being deeply entrenched in the different local markets? A second question on DBS. We didn't spend time on that. If it's possible to understand a bit of the reason why you expect flat revenues in that small segment? Thank you.
Yep. Listen, DBS is a business. Let me start from the second one, that has an underlying growth that is driven by volume dynamics that are not the same of retail card payments. We need to start it from there. That's less exposed to volumes, and they are volumes that normally and generally grow a bit less. Second, we have certain discontinuities, I would say next year and the following one, mainly that are driven by bank consolidation, mainly in Italy, that basically, you know, create, you know, a little bit of a difficult start and therefore, you know, make the compounded growth more limited in the period.
As far as the digital Euro is concerned, I honestly don't know, in the sense that we're already using the Euro enough for that. It's less fragmented. The digital Euro will clearly be something that is coming on top, if anything, to this complexity. That's my perception. I don't know if, Roberto, you want to say one more word here. Roberto is a part of this market advisory group that has been created by ECB on the topic. By the way, Nexi has been selected as one of the five companies in Europe for a market test. You know, in particular, guess what? Acceptance of payments for physical SMEs, which obviously we love. Roberto, just share your view.
Yeah. Look, while on one side it's still early to know which direction the ECB will take, there is one key element. That is, the digital Euro is a currency, it's not a payment method. Therefore, we expect that the digital Euro will be integrated with the current APMs and local payment methods, therefore even more reinforcing the fragmentation and the strategic landscape that we discussed. That's it's probably the key answer to the question.
Yeah. We should really think it this way. What really creates the complexity is not this, it's not what goes through the pipe, but it's what the pipe is activated by the customers that are paying, and what the pipe is integrated with in the back end of the merchants. That's where the complexity explodes, regardless what goes through the pipe.
There's one just there.
Okay, perfect. We are completing all of them.
Thanks, Paolo and Bernardo. This is Aditya from Bank of America. Two quick ones for me. On issuing, can you talk about the competitive landscape there and what gives you the confidence on expanding that offering into markets outside of Italy and Nordics? And second, on M&A, you touched upon there's a few bolt-ons which are possible. Do you think transformative M&A in Europe is now largely done, or is there more on that side as well?
Listen, on your second one, I can only reiterate what I said before. You know, at the moment, we don't see us going into, you know, big things. You know, we will continue to explore now opportunities in the space that I've mentioned before, and most importantly, we are now deeply focused in delivering this plan. This is our plan. We are very happy with what we are, with the assets we are, with the presence we are, and we want to go after it with all our energy. On issuing, you know, what gives us confidence is what is already happening today, to be very simple, to keep it very, very simple. I think, Torsten and Alessandro took you through the various opportunities, and those opportunities are real today.
You know, we talked about winning new customer relationship beyond the Nordics and Italy and the other geographies where we are in. It's happening. You know, we have live examples, but we also have now a very active pipeline in that space. You know, we talked about upselling more valuable products and services, value-added services. It's happening on all customer banks that we already have across all the geographies. We talked about evolving into this Payments-as-a-Service business model, and that's something that in Italy we've been doing for the last 20 years, and we're doing more and more on new proposition, on new products. Now that we start now the effort of exporting it beyond Italy, we start to have very, very positive conversations and the first implementations ongoing.
That's what gives us the confidence. Again, you need to switch it from we just give you now core processing as now a commodity. That's not something that will generate a huge amount of growth because of all the reasons that you know. From moving into products, value-added services, and most importantly, having a conversation that is about how we help banks to do more business themselves, to manage their customer better themselves, instead of just, you know, cutting costs in the factory. The way we see banks evolving with the challenges that they have themselves is very much supportive of this direction. Listen, thank you so much. We need to stop. As always, we're gonna be not only available, but more than happy to follow up with any question or curiosity that you may have.
Thank you for the patience. We've been a bit longer. Thank you for actually been following us with a lot of attention, even if we deep dive into content. That's actually done on purpose. We really wanted to take you as much as possible into our world, but also to show you as much as possible two things, the progress we are making and the excitement that we have with what comes in front of us. Thank you very much for coming, and meet you very, very soon.