Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Worldline Full Year 2021 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Gilles Grapinet, Worldline CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. This is Gilles speaking. Thank you for attending today's Worldline conference call on our full year 2021 results. I will start the presentation providing you the key highlights of the year. Marc-Henri , our Deputy CEO, will make a deep dive on merchant services dynamics, illustrating the competitiveness and very strong position and market development of the company last year in particular. Hereafter, Eric, our Group CFO, will present you in detail our full year results before a wrap up from myself for the conclusion. This year has been a very satisfactory year in terms of complete execution of the Worldline roadmap, fully in line with the key priorities announced in February 2021. Priority number one was to deliver on our guidance, strong growth. Priority number two was to execute the divestment of TSS.
Third priority was to pursue executing market consolidation, value-creating opportunities, while successfully executing the first year of the Ingenico integration. Fourth was, of course, to shape our Worldline 2024 vision and to share it with the community. I will deep dive just after on these four cornerstones of the Worldline equity story. Globally in 2021, we have clearly fully executed our guidance 2021 with a particularly strong growth acceleration in H2, reaching double-digit as expected and announced. We completed the TSS strategic review, and as you know since yesterday, received a binding offer for the business by Apollo with a closing expected in H2 2022. We've been very successful in market consolidation with 4 new acquisitions. I will comment that in a minute.
We could present to you all a very well-articulated 2024 vision with a meaningful positioning in the payment ecosystem of the group after so many years of fast growth, enabling us to be well positioned to deliver accelerated growth in the coming years, coupled with margin extension to further make Worldline a premium global paytech company. I'm very proud with the team of these four key achievements, paving the way to a successful execution of our midterm trajectory. Now turning to our full year 2021 results. As you can see here, we have achieved all the financial targets of our full year guidance. Regarding the organic revenue goals, we have delivered a 6.8% organic performance, fueled by a growth acceleration all along the year as planned, and in particular, also 10.2% growth in H2.
More importantly, Merchant Services, after posting a high single digit growth rate in Q3, has accelerated as anticipated to reach 15% organic performance in Q4, despite unexpected COVID constraints in some of our key geographies that came very late at the end of the year 2021. This growth acceleration, delivering operating leverage coupled with the full execution of our synergies, allowed us to improve by 220 basis points our OMDA margin to reach 25.3%. Last, we've been able to deliver an OMDA to free cash flow conversion of circa 44% above our initial expectation of circa 42%. Regarding the TSS strategic review now, I would like to remind you the timeline we followed last year. As I said that we closed, as you remember, Ingenico at the very late part of the year 2020, at November 1st, exactly.
It has been executed as per plan, and considering the usual processes for this type of transaction and for an operation of this magnitude that I will detail, I would like to remind you the key steps we went through. During the first half 2021, our team defined the carved out perimeter, allocated the right assets at the right place, combining in particular the Ingenico terminals and the Worldline ones. In parallel, we designed a standalone business plan, including synergies on one hand, and of course forecasting investment and benefit of the engaged transformation to what we call PPaaS, i.e., Payments Platform as a Service, on the other hand.
Of course, once done, we could initiate a competitive process with prospective buyers while finalizing the targeted corporate structure, and we have also engaged the future commercial framework definition between Worldline and the standalone TSS. With all that in October 2021, you remember that on that basis, the board of directors has validated that the divestment of TSS was actually feasible and was the right thing to do for the business and the company at large, with a priority given to the short-term scenario based on the ongoing sale discussion progressing as per plan with, now you know it, Apollo. As you know, our board has accepted the offer from Apollo in February 2022 for a total value of EUR 2.3 billion at current fair value. We expect to close the transaction during the second half of this year.
This announcement represent for us a very strong achievement in our strategic roadmap with a higher focus from now on on core payment activity and enhanced growth profile for our group. Of course, a very significant contribution to the accelerated deleverage to improve our strategic agility for further M&A operations. On the strategic development side, as I mentioned sooner, just as a reminder here, because you followed us, we have signed four major acquisitions in 2021, confirming our European market consolidated position and reinforcing Worldline global reach and scale. In Southern Europe, the acquisition of Cardlink and Eurobank in Greece, representing circa 370,000 merchants served, and circa 700 million transactions managed or acquired per year.
Secondly, the acquisition of Handelsbanken and card acquiring in the Nordics, representing an add-on to our existing presence over there of more than 20,000 merchants, generating themselves more than 500 million transactions processed. Last, of course, the joint venture with BNL banking group in Italy through the acquisition of Axepta Italy with a merchant portfolio of circa 30,000 merchants and circa 200 million transactions acquired. These four operations fit perfectly with our strategic objectives to further expand Worldline reach and scale in Europe, and more specifically in Southern Europe, with the expansion of Merchant Services footprint in promising and fast-growing countries, and of course, a higher exposure to mass tourism.
It is also, for us, a demonstration of our capacity to focus on strategic long-term partnerships with major local banks which more than ever are actually engaged into the divestment of their payment assets. I would like to emphasize that this operation offer for us new and solid platform to further expand Worldline presence in these dedicated geographies and represent per se significant additional growth opportunities for the group once closed and fully integrated with the rest of our operations. As you can see on the right, combined, these acquisitions represent already a meaningful add-on to our Merchant Services as it was at the end of 2020, with a full year of contribution of circa EUR 170 million of revenues and circa EUR 50 million of additional OMDA before synergy of 7% incremental contribution on both parameters.
Now, moving forward in this presentation, I want, jointly with Marc-Henri, to address one of the key market concerns which did appear in all our discussions with you over the last months. Let's face it, the volatility on the payment stocks since last summer, and in particular in Q4 2021, has been very violent. I spent consequently with my team many, many hours in Q4 to discuss with investors and analysts to try to understand why the so-called disruption narrative did appear, and why, between brackets, incumbent players in the U.S. or in Europe in merchant acquiring like us were supposed to have lost or to be losing market shares.
Also why this narrative, born in the U.S. during the summer or during H1, was transposed right away into the European market despite our continent is having a very different competitive landscape and very different structural characteristics? Here, I would like to really thank the many, many of you who shared with us time, questions, views, and analysis on this situation. To address this concern, we took away from this very intense dialogue with you that beyond delivering the solid full year 2021 performance that we were committed to deliver, we also needed to provide you with a reinforced set of data points, business KPIs, and commercial proof points so you can better assess our Merchant Services and acquiring business performance in its core markets.
Marc-Henri will now take the floor to guide you through this new part of the presentation, which is intended to bring across, based on facts and figures, a very simple message. Far from losing shares, the merchant acquiring activities of our group has very materially developed its key market position in 2021, thanks to its scale, competitive value proposition, and the first benefits, obviously, of the Ingenico acquisition. Marc-Henri, I give you the floor.
Thank you, Gilles, and good morning to you all. I'm indeed very pleased to come and guide you through this part of today's presentation, our very satisfactory merchant acquiring business market performance in 2021. I will cover four types of new business information and KPIs we will regularly bring in. Regarding the Merchant Services mass market segment, I will share with you the evolution of our net number of small merchants in 2021. Regarding the segment of large domestic or international merchants, I will share with you the main wins of Q4, and we'll do some deep dives to highlight our key differentiating factors. Regarding the monetization strategy of our Merchant Services platform, I will comment on the numerous new partnerships signed in Q4, and we'll zoom on a couple of these.
Last but not least, I will report on our Merchant Sales Volume growth, and you will see that in 2021 it has been growing clearly faster than the total MSV of our addressable markets. Let me start my deep dive on Merchant Services dynamics with what we consider as the heart of the Worldline engine, our merchants, which represents the first pillar of our activity growth. In 2021, we have onboarded 120,000 new merchants, pushing our merchant base at the end of 2021 at 1.1 million. It represents a steady growth of Worldline acquiring merchant base up 12%, driven by all merchant segments, with in-store merchants up circa 10% and online merchants up circa 20%.
As a matter of fact, our main challenge in 2021 was the timely sourcing of the payment devices for our new merchants because of the component shortage. This overall dynamic is the result of Worldline key differentiating factors and dedicated offering covering all type of merchants. On the small and medium business side, our main offering provide, as example, package plug-and-play solution with a monthly fee online subscription with easy and efficient digital onboarding merchant web self-care. Regarding the large retailer, we provide tailored offers with consultative approach to boost sales and conversion rates, omni-channel solution with global e-commerce and collection services, wide international coverage, et cetera, et cetera. All these dedicated offering fit perfectly with the merchant needs and provide at the end a simple, transparent, and seamless solution to merchants, simplifying the complexity of the payment ecosystem for them.
This performance clearly highlight the unmatched access to the European retail and is giving us some advance and security for our midterm objective to onboard circa 190,000 merchants over the period 2020- 2024. Coming to the Q4 significant merchant wins, which reflects the relevance of the Worldline offering, I decided to illustrate this around two categories. First, I will share concrete examples on the way we grow and our share of wallets with existing customer. Then I will give examples of new merchants we could win from competition. Let us start with the development of existing customer. On the left part of the slide, with L'Oréal, as you can see its logo, we expanded the number of coverage brands, we onboarded, for example, Valentino, La Roche-Posay, supporting them into their digital transformation.
If I take the example of Shine, we increased the geographic coverage of countries where we do e-commerce, where they do e-commerce with us. With Aldi, we expanded the scope of services delivered with a one-stop shop offering in Belgium. Now coming to new wins, our full service and omni-channel solutions made the difference for Costa Coffee, for example. Our value-added services attracted Diners Club, with in particular, our cross-border solution giving access to the Indian consumers. Regarding Motorola or Kilo Health, it was the quality of our international corridors that made the difference for helping them to sell in e-com from one country to another. Now let me detail two exemplary cases gained during the fourth quarter.
I will start with Scheidt & Bachmann, a world leader in innovative system solutions for mobile living, like for example, equipment for car parks, for petrol stations, or for local public transport. To allow this merchant to improve user experience through seamless payment in petrol stations, we have developed a new full one-stop offering. Leveraging our scale and reach, this solution has been designed for pan-European deployment, providing a faster go-to-market and easing the integration into the merchant infrastructure. Coupled to this solution, we have as well attached several value-added services, such as a complete suite of payment solutions with acquiring of domestic and international country payment schemes, and the integration of Worldline Pay & Drive wallet, allowing consumers to book and pay online when they go to the pump.
More globally, we have brought to Scheidt & Bachmann the ability to provide a smooth, convenient, and digital payment experience to their customers, allowing them to add value in transforming petrol station into mobility hubs. Now let's talk about ASOS, a market-leading digital player for fashion and cosmetic products, having by nature a global reach serving several geographies. Their needs were to find a payment partner able to fit with their reach, but having a local knowledge as well in terms of payment and tech expertise. Our global presence, coupled with deep local knowledge of payment infrastructure and payment means, has been a key differentiating factor, and more importantly, our ability to provide very powerful domestic solutions through our corridor strategy.
This local knowledge, supported by a robust and efficient tech infrastructure, has been key to deliver a solid performance in terms of conversion rates for ASOS, thanks to perfect use of real data, real-time data analytics. These two examples show our ability to improve merchant business performance by combining our global payment solution with a strong capability to customize our integration. That was particularly important for Scheidt & Bachmann, and our ability to excel in performant local payment means, and that made the difference for ASOS. As presented during our Investor Day in October 2021, another way to bring value to our merchants is through our orchestration strategy. Our scale, reach, and single entry point to circa 15% of the European retail give us a key advantage and strong attractivity in the payment ecosystem.
This position allows us to sign numerous partnerships during the fourth quarter with fintechs and digital native players. This partnership approach is one of the growth accelerator for Worldline. With on one end, the additional services of the partner, and on the other end, its proper reach to its own portfolio of new merchants. Here, we are entirely at the center of the payment ecosystem, playing fully our role of orchestrator and monetizing the unrivaled position we have built since several years. Let's go through two partnerships we have signed in the fourth quarter that illustrates fully our ability to leverage our scale and leverage the vertical reach of our partner. Let's start with APEXX, who provide an aggregated portfolio of 12 Buy Now Pay Later solutions in over 40 markets globally.
Based on an API onboarded in our platform, we bring to our online merchants a strong benefit in time to market and cost efficiencies through a single interface to benefit from all this Buy Now Pay Later solution. It's a perfect example of simplifying the ecosystem complexity for our merchants while monetizing our large merchant base. Regarding Joom, it's the other way around. The problem of this marketplace was to offer European merchants access to new markets. Here we have connected Joom marketplace with its merchants to our product portfolio based on the Worldline Payment Suite. The turnkey solution has delivered for Joom an improved checkout conversion rate and allows an optimized choice of payment method. In that case, we leverage the merchant access of our partners thanks to our value added solutions.
To conclude on my part, let us come back to data, how our actions to expand our merchant base contribute to our overall MSV growth. MSV, you know, it is a total payment value we acquire for our merchants. In 2021, Worldline own acquiring MSV has increased by 11% versus 2020 to reach EUR 265 billion, which represents an outperformance versus our addressable acquiring market. It illustrates our capacity to gain market share in both in-store and online, with respective MSV growing at circa 10% for the store and circa 30% for the online. Maybe more importantly is the dynamic at play in the course of 2021.
After our first quarter, impacted by severe restriction in our core countries, our MSV has accelerated steadily quarter after quarter, and we have been able to deliver a solid double-digit growth, not only versus 2020, but versus 2019 MSV as well, along the second half of 2021. To be noted that this recovery has been done without any real comeback of the travel and airline vertical, which would provide a really important opportunity going forward. As you can see in the blue curve on the chart, we continue to see at the beginning of the year 2022 a solid trend in the MSV expansion, giving us confidence to deliver our growth ambition in 2022.
Concluding this section, I hope you could see that we did work a lot to provide you with more business KPIs and data to show the momentum of our Merchant Services activity. I believe this data of merchant numbers, MSV expansion, are clearly showing we are not in a situation of being disrupted, but that we are in continuous motion to expand organically. We are determined to continue this journey and accelerate by developing further our core solution and assets, allowing us to bring to our clients an always better business performance. I will now give the floor to Eric to present you our financial performance.
Thank you, Marc-Henri, and good morning to you all. Let me now come back on key 2021 figures, which are reflecting precisely our solid performance. Revenue for 2021 was EUR 3.69 billion, representing an organic growth of 6.8% compared to 2020 at constant scope and exchange rate. Regarding our profitability, our OMDA is at EUR 933 million, representing 25.3% of revenue, or a 220 basis points improvement compared to 2020. This margin improvement comes from our ability to deliver our expected synergies on top of operating leverage generated by the accelerated growth profile in H2. Full-year 2021 free cash flow was EUR 407 million, representing a strong conversion ratio at 43.6% of OMDA.
It's 160 basis points above our guidance. Normalized net income group share reached EUR 440 million on continued operation, representing 12% of revenue, and normalized EPS diluted reached EUR 1.53 per share, up 6%. As you can see, all our 2021 objectives have been reached. During 2021, Worldline's revenue reached EUR 3,689 million, posting a 6.8% organic growth and a strong revenue recovery in the second half, compensating the first half softness in Q1 triggered by COVID restrictions. All divisions are up in 2021, with Merchant Services up 8.2%, accelerating its growth with 12.2% in H2. Financial Services up 3.1% with the same pattern as MS and posting a 5.2% organic growth in H2.
MTS accelerating as well with 6.8% organic full year, including a 9.3% in H2. Overall, after a first half impacting by a Q1 affected by COVID restrictions, all businesses have been recovered strongly in the second half as expected, with a 10.2% organic growth at group level. I will come back with more details on the next slide regarding the phasing of the full year by division, with a focus on Q4, which has been strong in each business lines.
Before moving to OMDA, I would like to stress that in 2021, Worldline fully recovered from the COVID impact, with 2021 revenue even growing low single-digit versus 2019 in all GBL on a full-year basis, despite still significant COVID headwinds during the year. Now, regarding the OMDA performance, during 2021, Worldline's OMDA reached EUR 933 million, representing 25.3% OMDA margin. This represents 220 basis points improvement in profitability, mainly driven by Merchant Services, with a profitability up 220 basis points, cost saving in the corporate level related to Ingenico integration, and continued positive improvement on MTS and FS. Let me now detail these numbers.
On the slide, I would like to cover the revenue building blocks for the fourth quarter of 2021, and the quarterly phasing of our performance since the beginning of the year. As a quick reminder, Q1 was still severely impacted by the pandemic, while we have enjoyed a strong growth acceleration in Q2 and in Q3, led by combination of a strong volume recovery and easier comps, fully compensating the first quarter decline. Let me now comment on our Q4 performance by GBL. First, Merchant Services posted a solid 15.1% organic growth despite some COVID constraints during the quarters, notably in Austria and the Netherlands.
During the quarter, the positive trend on volumes benefited to commercial acquiring and omni-channel payment acceptance, resulting in a strong growth in almost all geographies and customer segments, and much stronger transaction volumes for large retailer and e-commerce in verticals such as digital goods and services or marketplaces, despite the lack of transaction volume in travel and hospitality. Digital Services was also growing in Q4, but in the low single digit side due to the impact of worldwide component shortages slowing down terminals availability. Second, Financial Services showed a 5.4% organic growth in Q4, with all divisions contributing positively and with FS overall contributing to an accelerated quarter-over-quarter, driven by payment flow pickup and ramp-up of large outsourcing contracts.
The growth was led by the digital banking and account payment divisions, thanks to higher volume and new trusted authentication services, the ramp-up of UniCredit, and a high level of project activity. Regarding acquiring processing and issuing processing, the effect from the COVID-19 on process volume was limited in Q4. Revenue linked to card-based payment processing activities was slightly up due to lower project activities and price reduction considered at renewal time of large historical Equens contracts. Third, Mobility & e-Transactional Services benefited from the recovery on transactional revenue and the rollout of several projects, leading to Q4 revenue reaching EUR 85 million, representing an organic growth of 7.7%. This strong performance was led in particular by the volume pickup in the transportation sector, coupled with several development projects in both e-ticketing and trusted digitization.
Overall, this solid performance with the expected pattern Q3, Q4 allowed us to post a double-digit growth in H2. On the OMDA side, after having been impacted by top line negative evolution in H1, profitability has raised significantly in H2, driven by growth acceleration and operating leverage, mainly on the MS and FS business lines. Overall, in a context of slight top line growth in H1, our OMDA is up 12% organically to EUR 383 million, showing a 170 basis points improvement in terms of OMDA margin and reaching 22.6%. With a growth acceleration, our H2 OMDA is up 21% organically to EUR 551 million, showing a 250 basis points improvement in terms of OMDA margin reaching 27.6%.
This performance is driven by the ability of our business line to deliver margin expansion through operating leverage and synergy execution. In more details, on a full year basis, MS profitability is up 220 basis points to 26.1%, benefiting from cost control action, the execution of synergies from Ingenico and SPS, and ongoing transversal productivity improvement actions. The division benefited as well from its high fixed cost basis, providing operating leverage over the course of the second half. FS OMDA margin was up 15 basis points to 31.4%, still at a high level, but impacted by the ramp-up and build phase of new contracts and synergies, mitigated by the impact of price renewal of historical Equens contracts despite significant improvement of fixed cost base. MTS profitability is up 20 basis points to 14.9%.
The business line benefited from the positive business trend in e-ticketing, mainly in the U.K. and LATAM, fueled by transaction recovery post-COVID, and has been able to leverage the scalability of product investment plans on top of tight cost management. Finally, on the corporate side, we have pursued the strong action taken to deliver synergies and streamline our cost base, reducing our corporate cost by EUR 23 million over the year or an improvement of 75 basis points. Globally, it's a strong achievement in 2021, and this evolution fully confirms our three-year trajectory. Now moving from the OMDA to the other element of the income statement, which is now presented under IFRS 5, which consists in presenting continued operation without TSS.
Non-recurring item reached EUR 364 million and constituted globally purchase price allocation amortization for EUR 189 million, mostly linked to Ingenico acquisition, and integration and post-acquisition cost of EUR 95 million corresponding to Ingenico integration cost, remaining part of system and services in integration cost. All the increased versus 2020 number can be explained by Ingenico combination and synergy plan. As a result, operating income for the full year 2021 was EUR 304 million. Net financial expense amounted to EUR 38 million, in particular, due to a full year effect of interest of Ingenico bonds and the new bonds and OCEANEs issued in 2020. The tax charge was EUR 64 million, with an ETR of 24% in 2021, reducing by 180 basis points versus 2020 level. We keep the objective to try to maintain the ETR in that range going forward.
As a result of the above item, net income group share was EUR 191 million on continued operations. Discontinued operation net income, booked according to IFRS 5, reached EUR 110 million before the impact of TSS sales triggering an impairment of circa EUR 900 million and tax impact of circa EUR 150 million. Both one-off lead to a negative net income for the year of EUR 751 million. However, the normalized net income stood at EUR 440 million on continued operation, representing 12% of revenue, and our normalized diluted EPS reached EUR 153 million compared to EUR 145 million in full year 2020, and representing a 6% improvement. Regarding the cash flow statement, the main parameter of our free cash flow generation, our CapEx, at EUR 226 million.
This amount is fully in line with our 2021 objective to be in the range 5%-6%, and we expect to accelerate in 2022, still in the expected range of 5%-7% as per our new three-year plan. The change in working capital requirement in 2021 brings an anticipated positive contribution of EUR 62 million, reflecting the alignment of contractual T&Cs and procurement best practices in Worldline and Ingenico, mainly in H1. It should normalize in 2022. Integration costs were fully in line with expectation and mostly related to Ingenico and SPS post-acquisition integration. Overall, the full year 2020 free cash flow was EUR 407 million, representing 43.6% of OMDA, excluding any contribution from TSS and supporting our three-year plan trajectory.
It's a strong achievement reflecting our ability to deliver quick wins on the synergy side while optimizing implementation costs and also the application of our strict cash management policy. Let's now look at the net debt evolution on this slide. The group net debt decreased to EUR 2,923 million, against EUR 3,211 million at the beginning of the year. The main driver of this evolution is the strong cash generated we have delivered during the year 2021. The other point to mention are the impact of the acquisition and disposal closed in 2021 for EUR 315 million, mainly related to the acquisition of Handelsbanken and Cardlink. The contribution of TSS reached EUR 186 million and corresponded overall to a free cash flow generated by the entity accounted under IFRS 5.
Regarding TSS sales impact, adding the upfront cash consideration consisting of the enterprise value and the bridge EV to equity, it would lead to a theoretical 2021 group leverage ratio around 1.5x times OMDA. Our net debt trajectory is well in line with our expectation at the end of the year. On this slide, I will highlight the changes of scope related to the acquisition and disposal made in 2021, and the estimated impact of the acquisition to be closed in 2022. As a reminder, Axepta closed in January, ANZ expected to close end of March, and Eurobank expected to close end of H1, beginning of H2. To give to the market a comprehensive view of the starting point of our 2022 guidance, I will describe just after.
The overall change of scope relate to the new basis of 2022 guidance is shown on this slide for revenue and OMDA at group level. I will also provide the detail by GBL, by quarter and semester in the appendix of this presentation. On this basis, we expect for the full year 2022, 8%-10% revenue organic growth, an OMDA margin improvement between 100 basis points and 150 basis points compared to the 2021 estimated pro forma margin of 25%. Finally, an OMDA conversion rate into free cash flow of circa 45%. Looking to the guidance more in detail, the bottom range factors localized and temporary COVID constraints impacting merchant activity, limited recovery of international travel, and some limited delays on POS supply related to a still ongoing component shortage.
Regarding the growth pattern we expect in 2022, and referring to the slide that Marc-Henri presented to you earlier on our MSV development in 2021.
I would remind you that we should benefit from a favorable comparison basis during the first half, mainly on the Merchant Services activities with a Q1 stronger than Q2. The second half should be more normalized, H2 2021 being less impacted by health restrictions. On the OMDA side, we should not have any big differences in terms of margin improvement each semester year on year, with H2 profitability remaining higher than H1. Now I'd like to leave the floor to Gilles for the conclusion.
Many thanks, Eric. Now moving indeed to the key takeaways of this great year 2021 for the group. Definitely for us, year 2021 has been a year of very solid execution on all fronts, paving the way for a successful start of our new 2022/2024 medium-term plan. Regarding 2021, I would like to highlight four key achievements. First, a very solid commercial performance, with in particular in Merchant Services, a strong mass-market merchant base increase, numerous commercial successes with large merchants materializing in the end into a double-digit growth in our acquiring MSV, as seen sooner with Marc-Henri.
Second highlight, the perfect delivery on our full-year guidance, despite the uncertainties related to the remaining COVID impact during the last year, with the material acceleration of growth and profitability, in particular with H2 double-digit growth and the combined benefit of the operating leverage and the synergies at the OMDA level when the growth was coming back. From a more strategic standpoint, the sale of TSS accelerated powerfully our deleverage and is improving further our strategic agility, driving me to the fourth highlight of 2021 execution, where our leading market consolidator status has been once more illustrated with the four new acquisition I covered earlier.
All this makes 2021 a very solid cornerstone to project with confidence our group in the next three years, as you could see with our 2022 guidance, which is fully set in accordance with our three years trajectory, which I am happy to reiterate on the next slide. I remind you that regarding growth acceleration and profitability improvement, we expect to deliver a 9%-11% revenue CAGR over the period 2022 to 2024, improve our OMDA margin by more than 400 basis points over this period of time, trending towards 30% by 2024, and generate an OMDA conversion into free cash flow of 50% by 2024.
On top of our very powerful organic ambitions for 2024, we expect, of course, M&A to stay an important priority in the coming three years, which is part, as you all know, of the Worldline DNA and strategic ambitions. Thank you very much for your attention so far, and I am ready with Marc and Eric to take your questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To remove your question, please press the hash key. Please stand by. We'll compile the Q&A queue. Once again, star one to ask a question, and hash or pound key to remove your request. The first question comes from the line of Josh Levin from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Two questions for me. You talked about taking share or winning new clients. To what extent are you taking share or winning against banks as opposed to other standalone payment companies? When you do take share or win a client, is there a common reason why, or is it for a variety of reasons? The second question, in the slides, you briefly mentioned your partnership with the payment orchestration company, Spreedly. Can you tell us more about what that partnership entails and what payment orchestration means for Worldline? Thank you.
Hi, Josh. Good morning. Good to hear you. I will give the floor to Marc-Henri, maybe.
No, yes, Josh, to your first question, from whom are we gaining merchants? If I think about the big numbers and the 120,000, by definition, when you talk about such big numbers, we are talking about smaller merchants, mass market. Today, this mass market still relies primarily in Europe in the end of historical bank acquirers. It's primarily from this player that we are winning these businesses. How do we do so? By having a convincing and simple service offer, the packs and the way we price in a smarter way, embedding simplified, you know, and adapted to each segment.
Some prefer to have a fixed amount with a limited number of additional transaction or they prefer something which is largely in terms of transaction and no fixed fees. You just need to be smart and to have the right distribution channels to push and to win with merchants. That's primarily in these domains that we are winning market share. On bigger merchants, it's from all kind of competitors. Here, I think what makes the difference is primarily the quality of our in-store solution and what we gain notably from integrating Ingenico.
I think when a retailer starts to be really big and need to have the best solution in terms of Smart Routing, competitive pricing, I think what we have is really of a premium dimension.
I would mention it then on top what I explained during the presentation, we have an ability, drawing on our IT DNA, to customize, to go a bit deeper into adapting to the digital journey, the choices like we did with Scheidt & Bachmann in particular. Now coming to the partner's question, I think without going into details of confidential commercial information, what happens is that when, for example, we distribute this kind of BNPL operator like we did for APEXX or similar stuff, we are in a position to simplify the access and to have a take rate on distributing these products, most of the time, very similar to what we experience in a classical acquiring business.
It brings an additional momentum and additional level of revenue and business for our activity. I would say classically 20-30 basis points is a kind of take rate we experience on this kind of partner. This orchestration, this monetization of our position is to be a one-stop-shop historical partner of a merchant and enlarging the number of services he can benefit from, that he pays with a similar take rate that he has experienced with his acquiring activity in the past or on top. For the partners, we are an obvious choice because we have this access to 15% of the European market.
We know that signing with us, getting in agreement with us, it's a strong accelerator to their coming to the market. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Mohammed Moawalla from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you very much. Hi, Gilles. Hi, Marc-Henri. Hi, Eric. I had several, but before that, thank you for the added disclosure and information that you're giving us. So much appreciated. I wanted to just start with the outlook. I know, Eric, you gave us some sense on the quarterly cadence, that sort of Q2 would obviously not be as strong given the comps. But do you think Q2 can still grow positively? I know, I recognize that there was a very tough comp a year ago. As we think of that sort of acceleration into the back half, could you give us perhaps a bit more color around Merchant Services in particular, around sort of the growth levers you expect there?
How should we think about the potential sensitivity given your expectation that there is very little assumption around international travel that you've baked in? If there is a sort of rebound, can you help us frame some of the upside? Second question, kind of more bigger picture in nature, Gilles. Could you comment? I mean, there's increasingly a lot more talk around platforms, you know, entering the mid-market. Could you talk a bit about, you know, Worldline's strategy to kinda counteract that? I know that you're kinda competing a lot with banks and taking market share, but a lot of the kinda next gen players are increasingly enabling the platforms to go after the mid-market. What is, you know, Worldline's strategy to counter that? Thank you.
I will maybe just start with the second, Marc-Henri, you can chip in any time. Clearly, you understand that it is indeed for us a key focus to progressively ourselves set up a much wider value proposition to the merchant ecosystem and also to the banks with whom we partner as a matter of fact, by constantly enriching our connectivity with third parties. We connect ourselves with marketplaces, with various players. Some, by the way, of the platform you mentioned are also customers of us, and we are working with some of the big names. Even if there's a moment in time we are not always disclosing the status of this information.
Fundamentally, we will focus a lot on both pursuing what we do here, which is constantly expanding the base of merchants that we onboard on our own platform, and enrich constantly the Worldline platform itself by this open innovation framework that we've been developing, that Marc-Henri has started actually to share with you some of the latest names that have been onboarded and that we actively pursue growing. It is like a commercial channel to engage and to structure more and more this type of discussion all across the place. Of course, market is a competitive market, as we all know. I must say that at this moment in time, we feel extremely strong, in particularly the mass market and the medium-sized market, regarding what we have in our hands and the recent track record of our market penetration.
Marc-Henri, you want to comment on that?
No, I think you said it very well. We consider ourselves and we position ourselves as a central platform in the payment market. That, when we talk about this open innovation and this partner strategy, we currently today have hundreds of partners, ISVs connected and spreading our services to the mid-market. It's certainly something we want not only to continue but to boost, like we shared with you in Investor Day. We constantly keep you posted on signing new partners. For sure, the goal of this strategy, we see some from other players, is having proper APIs optimized for developers to connect.
It's something on which we have improved a lot over the recent period. It's a massive topic of attention and investment for us. It's not huge. It's not, you know, it's not rocket science. It's available technology. We have the people. We are really in this moment evolving very fast on this domain and expanding a daily or a developer portal. I'm very confident of this positioning on the mid-market and the technology positioning of Worldline is at current position as well to-
Score there as well. Eric?
On the first question and the outlook, what I wanted to stress is that indeed in H1 in particular, we'll have a discrepancy in the growth between Q1 and Q2, with Q1 being higher than Q2. It doesn't mean, of course, that Q2 will be shy. I think Q2 will be more normalized. That's the key message. That's true for all our GBL including MS, by the way. For MS, I have said that we expect probably low double-digit growth for the year. We should expect to be on the higher side for Q1 due to the recovery effect from COVID.
Then progressively to normalize Q2, Q3, Q4, to reach this overall low double-digit rate for the year. Definitely we should expect a good performance in Q2 as well. There is no specific point I wanted to stress on Q2. On your point related to travel, in our guidance, we have factored a bit the two options. First one would be a good recovery of travel, including international travel, that would support our top line and help us to be rather on the top part of the guidance.
On the other end, we have also identified some headwinds that could bring us rather to the lower end that I have listed, including the fact that international travel could remain low during the full year when there is hope at least that it could restart as early as H2.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Sandeep Deshpande from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for letting me on. A couple of questions from me. I mean, Gilles, strategically, how do you look at the consolidation theme from here? I mean, you did the Ingenico deal, you did Equens in the past. I mean, they were big deals for the size of the company you were when you did them. Most of the European consolidation from here is about smaller businesses, from, mainly coming out of the banks to be consolidated. So will they really make a significant difference to your earnings profile as you do them? That's my first question. The second question, coming back to the, you know, the questions which have arisen in the market about the growth of companies such as yourselves. I mean, when we look at...
I mean, clearly you did well in 2021 with respect to what you guided to. When we look at your, say, your Merchant Services business in 2020 when it declined, and then it grew again in 2021, some of the other, you know, companies which, you know, the market has talked about as being competitors taking share from you, which I would agree actually that they're not, seem to have seen a much bigger rebound in 2021 than yourselves. Is there an explanation for that?
Thank you, Sandeep, and good morning. I will take the first one. Maybe with the team here, we can also try to give you our views on the second one. But you understand that we do not feel at all in any type of defensive position. We are clearly ourselves feeling that our problem is actually to pursue having enough, in particular devices and capacity to sell the demand we are receiving from the market. But coming back to your first question, clearly, I mean, the consolidation has already moved in Europe quite significantly over the last five years. That being said, the first significant transaction we did was indeed Equens in 2015. From there, how do I see things evolving? First things first, where is the remaining...
Where are the remaining volumes in Europe in payments, and in particular in Merchant Services, but it is almost as true for financial processing? Still largely with banks. There are significant banks that have not yet taken the step to divest their payment activities, nor on the processing side, nor on the merchant acquiring side. Talking about a scale business, I'm not even talking here about gross profit that will come not systematically from the portfolio of a bank we acquire, because as the banks are divesting, generally because they feel the pressure of players like ourselves, which are actually eating a part of their cake, and they recognize that it is better to partner than to try to defend the market they cannot defend on a standalone basis.
Of course, when we onboard this portfolio, as we demonstrated many times, we accelerate very significantly the growth, in particular in bank-led geographies where we can take an advantage in terms of speed and momentum versus the remaining local bank players. The first answer to your question is there are still very significant volumes that could be captured in the coming years through an M&A strategy directed towards banks. I would flag here that in my ten years' time of tenure as a CEO of Worldline, I have never seen such a number of even some of the largest European banks that have actually undertaken very deep strategic reviews of their payment activities.
For me, if I need to look at 2021 as a type of real tipping point, it has been moving the thinking of some of the remaining largest European banks. To answer clearly the question, what should I do with my payment activities? I can tell you, and I think my team here would only concur to that, it is unprecedented to see now the question reaching the largest European banks. We will tell what will be the timing of answering these questions, but here I'm not talking about long term. Some of these banks are actually engaged, as we speak, into developing their scenarios and not, of course, breaching any confidentiality agreements here. I want even to flag that, of course, some of these discussions, of course, involve the company like Worldline.
We are absolutely involved in any scenario of this kind in Europe these days. For me, there is still a lot to be done. Of course, I cannot exclude that the merger of pure players in parallel could also take place. It has been the case between us and Ingenico, between Nexi and Nets, or SIA recently, and with us and SIX Payment Services. This is part of the playbook by definition. Scale will continue being an important point in the business as much as speed and technology, and from that standpoint, I believe we are not at all done with the consolidation thesis, particularly in Europe.
Regarding your second point, I mean, keep in mind that of course, when you read across results from payment companies, you need to take into consideration where they play and what are the core components of their businesses, and also their relative size. In the case of Worldline, just flagging here that we are operating still at this point in time in core continental European economies, which are, for many of them, and in our business profile, we have a much larger share, as you know, of physical payment activities, I mean, in face-to-face commerce than in e-com. Even if through Ingenico, we actually significantly increase our e-com exposure. Consequently, in our overall volumes, we also reflect the dynamic of domestic consumption in countries which are still ruled largely by domestic payment schemes.
When you do this read across, pay very close attention to the way you compute the underlying dynamics. We are operating in economies in Europe that are not having the strongest GDP growth. Within the GDP growth, we are exposed to the domestic consumption part for a big part. Of course, if you wonder why our MSVs are growing much higher than the addressable markets, it's just because we gain shares. It is that simple. We actually grow faster than the underlying market. Of course, taking into consideration the type of geography in which we operate, we are not in an emerging market, and we are not a 100% e-com player. If you back all that, I believe that the figures are exactly telling the truth of what we are. No, Marc-Henri?
No, I think it's exactly what you said. In this logic of rebound, our strong exposure to the in-store business in continental Europe is such that we did not get the full rebound of the economy, which is what I mean by that is that we did not get yet the full comeback to a normal in-store activity. If you look at what was happening in Q4 in continental Europe, you still had a significant restriction to restaurants opening in Netherlands, in Belgium, for example. In Germany, you had sanitary conditions that were such that people were still a bit hesitant to go to the store or limiting their access to the store.
We had this situation where the full comeback to the full in-store activity was not there yet, and it's still on view or in front of us. That's a positive dimension. On the online, we are not like traditional bankers or some traditional acquirers, pure in-store play. We have a strong online dimension and also increase in the Ingenico acquisition, but that does not make us a pure online player compared to some others. We are in this situation right now.
Just maybe a final remark, because sometimes I realize in all the discussion we had with the community since the Q3 release and of course, all what has been happening in the payment market. If you look at our, I would say, structural growth model, number one is, as we said, the expansion of our merchant base. It varies depending on countries to other countries. In certain countries, we have already a very large share of the local mass market. In other countries, we are clearly in a much more fast development model due to historical reasons. The number one is to increase the number of merchant locations, whether online or in the physical commerce world, that are actually onboarded on the Worldline platform. That's number one, increase the base.
Looking forward, you know that in Europe, and it is a very important point of difference with the U.S., the cashless penetration in general in Europe is much less advanced. We don't have recent data points after COVID, but it is easy to believe that. We have still by far more than 50% of the retail transaction done, not in cashless, at point of sale in Europe. There is a huge number of transactions that will be displaced to cashless. We increase the base, and year after year, each of our payment terminal or web pages or whatever type of cashless solution will see a part of increase of volume due to the shift to cashless. Increase the base, number one. Number two, more cashless transaction year after year. Number three is increasing through-
Cross-sell and upsell, the type of services that we can actually charge the merchant with to create more value for them, more stickiness with their consumers, helping them to foster their business, which in return will accelerate the number of transactions, of course, if they are more successful in business. This one, two, three, strategy is one of the very strong pillar on which we base our strategy and the data that Marc-Henri shared with you. For me, you know, it is exactly what we do. We build a very strong merchant platform, open, to third party to join us with their own value proposition and pursue surfing on the cashless displacement that is much less advanced in Europe than it is in some other parts of the world.
Thank you.
Next question. Hello? Operator? What's happening, guys?
Not sure.
Are we connected or not?
We are. Yeah, we are. Thank you.
Sandeep, just checking because we were just talking with you.
Yeah, I'm here. I'm here.
Okay. Thank you, Sandeep. I don't know what is happening because we don't receive the next question, and the operator seems to be disconnected. No, it is the operator that can give the floor to the next speaker. Sorry for that, guys. It seems that.
Thank you. I will go to your next question, sir. Is that okay?
Oh, yeah, that's perfectly okay. It was even expected, to be frank.
Thank you very much, sir. Your next question comes from the line of James Goodman from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Morning. Well, thank you. Firstly, just to dig a bit into the new material around the Merchant Services, and that is much appreciated. You showed the volume for the development of your own acquiring, I think EUR 265 billion. I recall, you know, previously you've talked about EUR 400 billion of processed volume. Just wanted to really dig a little bit into the trends and buckets in the other volume, I guess in terms of bank to bank and also gateway volume, and how those have trended, whether that's sort of similar to what you've seen in the acquired volume. I guess linked to that and more specifically focusing in on online, you've talked about 30% growth here in your acquired online volume.
I mean, if we think about Global Collect for a second, can you talk about the revenue performance there in 2020 and 2021? I presume a lot of what they, you know, process is still not fully acquired by Worldline, but I may have that wrong. That's the first one. Then secondly, switching over to profitability a little bit, I mean, maybe one way to ask the question, I noticed a few weeks ago, I think, that you announced you will hire 5,000 people over the coming months. At the same time, we've heard quite a lot from other in-store focused acquirers around sort of certain aspects of reinvestment and some reinvestment of synergies as well.
Just wanted to get your take on that and link to the significant hiring that you're planning, really how you think about those dynamics in the market versus your guidance you've given today and the midterm guidance on margin. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, James. I will take your questions. First on the EUR 400 billion that you remember. You remember well, and these were volumes that we gave, including the coming scope. The ANZ contribution. ANZ should contribute EUR 75 billion, it's expected to close in the coming months, it's really now very shortly in front of us. But that ANZ was supposed to. It's plan to bring EUR 75 billion of volumes. And in this collecting activity, which is not exactly acquiring business, but it's similar to it, was embedded in this EUR 400 billion number and was accounting for circa EUR 55 billion. All in all, it reconciles with the EUR 265 billion.
To comment on your question regarding Global Collect evolution, Global Collect evolution is evolving in the right range and so if we look at the period in which we are. You mentioned the fact that it's, it could go to more of a walled acquiring. It is indeed a momentum in which we are, but that's not the goal to switch a collecting business into a sole source internal acquiring activity. I think it's one of the differentiator of Global Collect and to have an ability to rely on different acquirers.
On the other hand, for other acceptance business that was coming from Ingenico and, you know, some in-store acceptance with the gateway or the online acceptance with the ongoing gateway being converging, we are switching progressively more and more of the existing flows into the Worldline acquiring. It's a contributor to our revenue synergies. We intend to continue boosting and developing this activity. Of course, Global Collect, it is not our intention to bring it to a full Worldline one-stop shop acquiring. We are not following the strategy of some other to have a one-stop shop solution that is also a kind of Lockbox one size fits all approach.
We do believe that on the market, our ability to differentiate by being a bit more tailored and customized also makes a difference. Now coming to the 5,000 hirings you mentioned. It's obviously designated to attract attention to support us in our hiring now campaign. We went on the high side in this HR-driven communication. Bear in mind that last year, on an overall stable workforce, we hire over 3,000 people due to the situation of turnover that exists in the industry. The fact that this number is embedding apprentices, trainees, and that the Worldline historical choices was to build internally and to master our technology.
We have a very large scope of activity, not only standard acquiring activities, but also with FS, we build the solutions themselves. We sell them to the banks with MTS as well. It's much more activity linked to building and developing our staff. If I come back to the big picture, 3,000 hired last year, over 3,000 hired last year. Next year, we will go to higher number, maybe not fully up to the 5,000 that we communicated to attract the attention of all potential interested parties. Indeed, due to the investment and the increase of CapEx that Eric mentioned, there will be a slightly higher number, and that's where we are going to maintain.
Yes, yes. Related to your question on synergies, we do not plan a massive reinvestment of the synergies. What we will do is to invest in the future product development and convergence, as we explained to you, through a CapEx and up to a level that is 5%-7%, which you also indicated in our three-year plan. It will also fuel part of our CapEx increase. Yeah.
That's very clear. Thank you both.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Alexandre Faure from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in. I had a couple of questions, please. The first one is going back to the SMB segment and perhaps if you could remind us of your distribution by channel in that segment. I think you touched on ISV as a distribution channel. Just curious if you could give us a steer of what's bank-led, what's ISV-led, and perhaps what's direct distribution in that particular segment. My second and last question would be on Financial Services. I think about a year ago you talked about some encouraging discussions with large financial institutions in France for outsourcing contracts. Just wondering how that's going. Thank you very much.
Marc-Henri?
Hello, Alexandre.
Yeah, Alexandre. I don't have a precise breakdown of the channels that the distribution channels we are having right now, given the size and the dimension of the volume of online activity as we speak. I would say that it depends very much on the various geographies and the setup we have in these geographies. As you will recall, in Czech Republic, we have a bank alliance. We have the same in Germany with PAYONE. It's not the same situation, or it's starting to be in Sweden now with Handelsbanken, but most of it was standalone with Bambora. It's a bit different, geographies by geographies.
I think I would not quote the bank-led as the first channel. They are bringing some leads, and then we concretize them. I think our sales force will be the first channel of activity, our own sales force and pushing directly our product to the market. I think very close to it, there is a network of partners and ISVs, and slightly behind, but sometimes in front in some geographies, you have the bank-led channel. It's a mix, but I would not be in a position to give a more accurate number at this level. Coming to large financial institutions discussions, we have a solid pipeline of discussions ongoing.
As you recall, it's an area where the timing of landing the deal is always more difficult to predict, given the time these institutions take in their own governance to make decisions, depending also on the overall context evolution and market evolution. I would say that in this moment we have a well-distributed in various geographies from north of Europe to south of Europe. We have a well-distributed pipeline of good discussions, both in terms of outsourcing, but also in terms of partnering. We said in the past or even recently in our investor day that we see a rather an acceleration of the thinking of the banks regarding partnering for their merchant acquiring activities.
We believe it is confirmed by the recent months and discussion. Not at all like in the past, as we were looking for cash for their ratios, but much more now, due to a much more intense competition, the specialization of this business and the need to have a bank-friendly partner able to handle the technological challenge.
Got it. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Hannes Leitner from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, thanks for letting me on, and I have also a couple of questions, and also appreciate the additional data provided. The first question is on synergies. Could you update us post the terminal sale on your synergies from Ingenico and what's the run rate at this stage? The second question is the slide 15 was very helpful, showing that you grow on market share. Could you talk a little bit about what's still suppressed within your volumes and within your total business? Thinking now about travel, thinking about in-store potentially being still suppressed over 2019 levels, and how much of that you expect to rebound this year and the next year. The third question is around TWINT and all those mobile schemes.
I know you have a shareholding in TWINT, so maybe you can talk there a little bit about the dynamics and the economics around it. Just a follow-up on the headcount, I'm not sure if I missed it. Can you give us the headcount number? You just said about the hiring. Thank you.
Okay. I will take the first one, Hannes, and we're speaking on the synergies. On the synergies front, TSS was not a big contributor, I think, to the overall Ingenico synergy plan. It was probably in the magnitude of 20-30 million EUR overall within the total plan. By the way, this will fuel their profitability, their own profitability improvement because they will continue to deliver both synergy on a standalone basis, combining the Worldline terminal and the Ingenico terminal. On Worldline, I think we are progressing on continued operation. We are progressing extremely well on the synergies with Ingenico.
We are fully in line with the first year of the plan, probably even with a bit of overachievement. We found a nice quick win, as you could see in the performance reported in corporate and in NMS. At this point in time, it's probably too early to update the overall number we expect. We are rather confident, and we continue to monitor on a monthly basis the performance and the materialization of those synergies at top management level. It remains a strong priority, and I can assure you that the team are fully committed to deliver the plan.
Very much confidence from the management team in this respect.
Regarding the business that is not yet back, if we take the travel, and I think the data point we looked at, it seems to be very similar for airline and travel and for Dynamic Currency Conversion, which is an important part of our acquiring activity. You may remember that we have our own internal solution, which is a strong margin driver for us. For both this activity, our data point are still circa 40% lower than what it was in 2019.
We looked also at some IATA information, and it seems that what we see is the overall case, that is the travel situation, the airline travel, if I take the airline, is circa 40% lower end of 2021, beginning of 2022 than what it was in 2019, with the domestic being like 20% lower and the intercontinental at 60% lower. We still believe that this is an upside still in front of us. The speed at which it will come back is with the driver of the gap between the high end and the low end of our guidance as we have expected, or it's one of the driver. That's a dimension.
Coming to TWINT, indeed we are, as per the deal with SIX Payment Services, we are a shareholder of TWINT. I must say, I don't know to what extent I am allowed to disclose the TWINT data given this situation. TWINT is not a listed company, but TWINT is doing well indeed. As a Swiss domestic payment solution, they are doing well. They have a very solid market share. The way it happens when we handle TWINT transaction for merchant is very similar in terms of take rate to debit cards on the Swiss market. For us, it's rather a positive and a driver of adoption of electronic payments.
TWINT has engaged in a European mobile payment association and is pushing for interoperability, and we are supporting them in this ideas. We believe it is a driver of international payment developments. Well, it's a European DNA and to be close to all this player to help them develop their activity.
It is part of course enriching constantly the value proposition for the merchants, Hannes, as you know, because all that we can of course embed into what we allow the merchant to accept as payment means if they believe their customers are interested. It is part of the constant expansion. You remember talking about another point, that we are also one of the first mover at scale allowing certain merchants to be paid through crypto wallets, i.e., allowing a merchant to allow its own customers to use their crypto wallet to pay at their point of sale. While of course we will deliver the fiat currency to the merchant and ensuring the trade behind with a partner, ensuring the liquidity between the crypto and the corresponding fiat currency.
For us, all this type of evolution of the innovation of online to cope with the future of payment method, whatever they will be, is a core component also of we believe what is a very strong and relevant value proposition. Tailor-made for, of course, different geographies. No need to tell that in Europe, there are still very significant differences in the way households are actually behaving from one country to another one, not even talking within the same country or different generation of consumers. All that is part of what is making Worldline quite unique as a platform of payment and what we are committed to pursue building in the coming three years.
Great. Thank you.
Maybe on your last question, Hannes, on the headcounts. Overall in Worldline, we have circa 21,000 headcounts out of which 4,000 in the TSS part. Meaning on the continued operation, we will be circa 17,000 post the transaction. To give you a precise number, we have hired in 2021 3,200 people.
Before the accretion and the turnover. I mean, in onboarding of people, but as you know, we are facing a significant level of turnover, naturally, and the job market is very tense these days. Of course, all that is also meant to compensate the people that are leaving for whatever reason, and there are always a significant number of thousands leaving the company to embrace a new opportunity somewhere else, and also to staff the growth that we have ahead of us, and also the accelerated transformation of our technology stack. All in all, I mean, we feel that we are quite well-positioned.
The company is attracting more and more attention thanks to an enhanced visibility, but it is still quite a dynamic job market, so you need to be highly visible and to not hesitate to use some marketing trick to attract attention on your job opportunities.
Great. Thank you for the detail. Good luck for this year.
Maybe we will take the last question, given that we are already well advanced in this call. Operator?
Thank you very much, sir. Your last question today comes from the line of Alastair Nolan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Morning, everyone. Thanks for squeezing me on. Maybe just two quick ones from me. I can see from the volume graph, which is really helpful, a slightly weaker end to the fourth quarter, and I guess that's clearly the Omicron impact. Can you maybe try and quantify what you think that impact might have been in the fourth quarter, and also any kind of specific comments around how that's trended in the first half of this year? Just finally on TSS disposal, can you just remind me, and apologies if I missed this, you've got the EUR 1.7 billion up front, potentially, and then the rest is based on some sort of performance targets? Maybe just the timing on that would be really helpful. Thank you.
In all fairness, it's hard to conclude, but maybe Marc-Henri can give you his own view on the Omicron impact between the year-end and what would remain at the very start of the year. If you take the Netherlands, there were still significant constraints in place early January in the Netherlands, in particular mandatory closure of shops relatively early in the day and still restriction on many socially intensive activities. We've been facing, if you remember, the full lockdown of Austria at the end of the year and significant restriction also in Germany.
Well, it's a bit difficult to say. Maybe a couple of points of growth on MS would be the order of magnitude of the Omicron impact in Q4. As you say now, it's comparing more COVID with less COVID now when we look at last year. It's a bit of a complex exercise. Yeah, when we try to assess a bit what was the impact of Omicron across the board for various activities, we would say on MS, on Merchant Services, which is the most sensitive to closures, of course, to shop opening, it is a couple of percentage points.
Regarding the TSS question, I mean, it's very simple. The delivery of the earn-out will be synchronized with the exit of the investment by Apollo. Basically, it will be aligned on their period of holding of the asset.
Thank you very much.
That it's adapted to maybe longer, maybe shorter. Many thanks, guys. It was really good to reconnect with you in these interesting times for us in the payment industry. I want really to convey our very strong conviction that we've been delivering a very solid execution of all our plans in 2021, that the company is really well prepared to engage into the new three-year plan. We have ahead of us, beyond good and solid organic growth perspectives, still a very interesting landscape in terms of further M&A opportunities. We are very keen now that we have solved the TSS topic to actively move forward.
Of course, I look to the nearest opportunity to re-connect with you all in person and start to get back to the good old life, which would be interestingly also good for the business. I wish you all a safe day, and hopefully we connect back. Bye-bye.
Thank you. That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.