Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Worldline Q3 2022 Revenue Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. I would now like to hand the conference over to CEO Gilles Grapinet. Please go ahead, sir.
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. This is Gilles Grapinet speaking. Many thanks for attending today's Worldline conf call on our third quarter 2022 revenue. I will start this presentation providing you the key highlights of the quarter. Marc-Henri, our Deputy CEO, will make a deep dive on merchant services dynamics, as we now usually do for a year. Hereafter, Gregory, our Group CFO, will present you in details our third quarter revenue before a wrap-up from myself for the conclusion before our Q&A session. Let me start by stating that we have delivered the fourth quarter in a row, posting a double-digit growth at group level, thanks to the steady growth in particular of our merchant services activities.
Indeed, after our solid H1 2022 at 12.6%, our third quarter is showing again a steady revenue momentum with 10% organic growth at group level. I want here to focus first on merchant services, posting its own fourth quarter in a row of a double-digit organic growth with close to 14% industry. This is worth to be noted, as it was achieved while continuing to absorb the ongoing material negative impact of the complete stop of our e-commerce activities with Russia due to the sanction framework since Q1 this year, and also facing a more normative comparison basis as Q3 2021 was close to back to normal post-COVID last year. In a minute, Marc-Henri will go more in detail into this merchant services performance, which is reflecting a very dynamic commercial development, both in stores and online.
Regarding financial services and mobility and transaction services, the performance is fully in line with our expectations, with FS delivering in line with the expected full-year trajectory, while MTS still continue to benefit from good commercial dynamics. Now regarding our strategic initiatives. First, of course, we have successfully closed this quarter the sale of TSS, which is a huge simplification of the group scope, allowing a reinforced focus from us on the core activities. The proceeds left us with a reinforced balance sheet, enabling us to take full advantage of the strong current momentum for European consolidation, in particular with bank partnerships. In parallel, we have been successfully developing new strategic initiatives, and they've been very active during the quarter with two operations executed. As you could see today, we have realized two investments in technology assets.
The first one into a Polish company called SoftPos, increasing our merchant value proposition towards, in particular, micro merchants. The second one, a Dutch company, OPP, providing us a strong marketplace solution with, in particular, a C2C focus on the circular economy. These two initiatives perfectly fit with our strategic roadmap presented during our Capital Markets Day last year, enlarging our technology portfolio. All this taken into consideration and while of course, as all corporates, we navigate into this adverse and volatile macro environment, our performance since the beginning of the year and the robust level of transaction volume so far on our platforms are paving the way to the execution of our full-year guidance we confirm today.
Marc- Henri will now take the floor to guide you through the commercial dynamics of our merchant services activities during the third quarter that we have continued to materially develop in our key market positions. Marc- Henri, floor is yours.
Thank you, Gilles, and good morning to you all. I'm very pleased indeed to take the floor and to guide you through this part of today's presentation, zooming on our very satisfactory merchant acquiring business market performance in the third quarter of 2022. I will comment three types of business information and KPIs. I will start by sharing with you the main wins and upsell of Q3 on the large merchants and the new partnerships signed, allowing us to further accelerate our monetization strategy. I will make a focus on the two tech investments we have done this quarter with SoftPos and OPP, and I will conclude on the full benefit of this market share and commercial developments on Worldline acquiring MSV growth.
Coming to the Q3 significant merchant wins and partnership, I must say they reflect the relevance of our offerings and the success of our orchestration strategy. Regarding the merchant wins, I will focus my comments on the new contract we have signed with Lufthansa Group. This new gain fully reflects the benefit coming from the combination of Worldline and Ingenico assets, and in particular, our verticalization strategy we presented during our investment day. Further to client needs. Lufthansa Group aims to build a robust payment platform which will provide a cohesive and succinct payment offering to their group, where all group members can take advantage of the service available. The partnership will give the Lufthansa Group the possibility to onboard a selection of Worldline solution from payment methods to consolidated reporting capabilities, all integrated with their core platforms.
Our key differentiators to win were, first, Worldline's vast experience in acquiring for airlines, you know, and our expertise in the travel industry that will also help ensure that the Lufthansa Group is best placed to offset and mitigate the risk and challenges that have emerged in recent years across the sector. Second, Worldline's continued investment in innovation, new market, and airline-specific services, including billing settlement plan and airline reporting systems. Last, our unique travel hub solution, a single scalable connection providing access to over 150 payment methods and currencies, multi-acquiring tokenization, and a range of fraud services, all through a single reporting and settlement channel. Now coming to the partnerships, our scale, reach, and single entry point to circa 15% of the European retail continue to give us a key advantage and strong activity in the payment ecosystem.
This position allowed us to pursue the dynamic in numerous partnership signing during the third quarter with FinTechs and digital native players. Among others I would like to highlight the following. First, Upstream Pay, we have signed a partnership with them to further help merchants to boost their conversion rates. We've already onboarded merchants such as Decathlon or Auchan. We developed an e-com interface based on technological live stream and chatbot solution to reach more consumers. On top, Worldline supports these e-commerce merchants to accept alternative payment methods such as Buy Now, Pay Later or wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay or e-vouchers in parallel of traditional payment means such as debit, credit card, or SEPA wire. With Zebra, our partnership is fully embedded into our Tap on Mobile solution.
Zebra is world leader in mobile scanning devices, and we are now going to roll out the solution across all Zebra distributors and integrator. This solution is compatible with all Android NFC devices based on a single API. Merchants will be able to transform a mobile device into a payment terminal, broadening our total addressable market to the micro-merchants segment. With BigCommerce, a global SaaS-based shopping cart solution, we natively integrate Worldline online solutions, providing merchant solutions to all merchant types from startup, mid-tier to enterprise-sized merchants. With this partnership, BigCommerce merchants will have access to Worldline pan-European acquiring or a selected regional acquiring solutions. Now, let's dig into the two tech investments we have made during this third quarter.
In Q3 of 2022, Worldline significantly enriched its value proposition for both in-store and online merchants, notably through the acquisition of a 40% stake in OPP and a 55% stake in SoftPos with a path to full ownership for both. Starting with SoftPos, this is a tech-intensive Polish startup who developed a solution to convert Android devices into secure payment terminals, enabling merchants, in particular the smallest ones, to accept card payments without the need of additional hardware. Worldline knows well the company with whom we were already engaged in commercial partnership. Indeed, based on SoftPos, Worldline launched a new product internationally, Worldline Tap on Mobile. I mentioned it talking about Zebra. The solution is designed to accept small amounts by tap, but also larger amounts with PIN entry on screen, improving customer experience.
Regarding OPP is a Dutch online PSP with a proven solution for digital payment to marketplaces and platforms, and with a specific focus in the consumer-to-consumer segment. OPP already serves over 100 marketplaces and platforms such as eBay Kleinanzeigen, Marktplaats, both part of Adevinta, Gumtree, Royal Flora, Holland, and PayPal. These brands appreciate OPP's strong features for marketplaces, including automated merchant onboarding or dispute management. This enable Worldline to comprehensively target the C2C marketplaces, which we believe will play a key role in the circular economy development. It will also serve growth opportunity in B2B and B2C domains. To conclude my part, let us come back to some business data point. All our actions to expand our merchant base have contributed to double-digit MSV growth during the third quarter.
In Q3 of 2022, Worldline own acquiring MSV has increased 17% versus Q3 of 2021 to reach EUR 90 billion, which represent a strong performance in our addressable European acquiring market. It illustrates our capacity to continue to gain market share both in-store and online with respective MSV growing at 16 and 23, circa 16 and circa 23% versus Q3 of 2021. For information, our MSV is organically up 33% versus Q3 of 2019. We continue to see a solid dynamic at the beginning of Q4 of 2022, with a steady trend in MSV expansion fueled by both in-store and online volumes. Last on the merchant counts that we report on a semestrial basis, I would just like to mention the positive ongoing trend.
At the end of Q3, our net merchant count was up circa double digit versus Q3 last year, pursuing on the solid 2022 trend presented in July. To conclude this section, I hope you can perceive through the sharing of KPIs and information, the strong business momentum of our MS activity as it enjoys more and more visibly the full power of Worldline value proposition to merchants and our reinforced competitive positioning. I will now give the floor to Grégory to present to you our financial performance.
Thank you, Marc-Henri, and good morning, everyone. Delighted to be presenting yet another set of double-digit growth numbers, both at group and MS level. Let me start with an overview of our revenue performance in Q3 2022. During the third quarter of 2022, Worldline's revenue reached close to EUR 1.2 billion, posting a solid 10% organic growth fueled by our MS activities that now represent almost three-quarters of Worldline's revenues. This translates into 11.6% organic growth year-to-date at EUR 3.1 billion in revenues. Now, let's have a look at the building blocks of our sequential growth components. At 10%, the group is posting double-digit growth for the fourth quarter in a row, slightly below H1, as expected, given the absence of COVID restrictions during Q3 last year.
In MS, it is also the fourth quarter in a row in double-digit territory with 13.6% growth, mainly fueled by high teens MSV growth and good commercial dynamics across the board. In FS, organic growth stood at 1.5% in Q3, in line with the expected trajectory, given several commercial developments and good trends, partially offset by the now well-known Equens customer contract repricing. Regarding NETS, organic growth reached 3.4%, still driven by trusted digitization and e-ticketing while facing a high comparison basis versus last year since Q3 2021 was up to 11%. Overall, our Q3 performance fully demonstrates the strength of our model, which combines strong acceptance and acquiring capabilities following the acquisition of Ingenico. Let me now detail these numbers by business line. As I just said, MS revenues reached EUR 828 million in Q3 2022.
This 13.6% growth includes the effect of the Russian sanctions. The immediate closure of our Russian corridor in February is indeed costing us almost three percentage points at MS level in Q3. Commercial acquiring growth was in the high teens, driven by all customer segments and geographies. Whether in our mass market activities or with large retailers, growth was in the high teens, pretty much mirroring the in-store acquiring MSV growth commented earlier by Marc-Henri. Also, our DTC products performed strongly, demonstrating the robust holiday period in our travel and hospitality verticals. Moving to payment acceptance with growth in the mid-single digit, it was impacted by the interruption of our Russian corridor. Excluding this effect, acceptance would have grown in the low teens area.
The performance remains driven by one, a steady performance of global sales and verticals fueled by new merchant wins and upsell with existing merchants. Two, a solid performance of our digital customers benefiting from the recovery in the travel vertical, as illustrated by the Lufthansa win. Last, on digital services, we experienced low teens organic growth contrasted across geographies with good dynamics in Germany, France, and in the U.K. in all customer segments, and a softer performance in the digital healthcare market. Commercial activity over the quarter remains strong, with numerous wins for both commercial acquiring and payment acceptance in store and online. Financial services, moving on to the next slide, reached EUR 241 million or 1.5% organic growth versus 2021.
The activity showed good volumes while commercial developments were partially offset by the 2021 Equens customer price reductions, as expected. As a reminder, these contracts have all been successfully extended for several years at the end of 2021. Regarding card-based payment processing and acquiring outside the Equens customers, we have experienced a positive performance driven by good dynamics in APAC, as well as improved transaction volumes in Belgium and Finland. Digital banking was low single despite continued PSD2 volume growth and country expansion. Finally, in account payments, performance has been softer with less project activity this quarter, but still good developments on the UniCredit contract now in run phase. Regarding the commercial activity, we've had several wins and partnerships based on innovative solutions for our banking partners and clients. Among others, I'd like to mention the DFM win.
With that five-year outsourcing contract, Worldline will handle instant payment and back-office processing services for Volkswagen Bank. Last, I'd like to mention that our pipeline of new projects remains significant across Europe with a sales cycle that implies the closing of large deals, hopefully before year-end. Let me conclude this part with MeTS. Revenue reached EUR 89 million, up 3.4% organically as expected. Looking at it by product, trusted digitization grew double digit during the third quarter, while e-ticketing activities performed steadily, fueled by increased volumes in the transportation vertical. Finally, on the e-consumer and mobility, we have experienced a mixed performance with contact activity impacted by the re-sourcing of a French secured mail telco contract. This effect has been partially offset by the ramp-up of newly signed contracts and increased activities of our new cloud solutions.
In terms of commercial activity, MTS third quarter has been dynamic. As an illustration, we have won an eight year public RFP with CNAF, by which Worldline will roll out its contact solution for calls management of the French Welfare National Organization. Now let me hand over to Gilles to conclude.
Many thanks, Grégory. Now indeed moving to the key takeaways of this Q3 2022. Actually, there's three key messages that I would like you to keep in mind are the following ones. Resilience, innovation, consolidation. First, resilience. The resilience of Worldline growth profile despite this complex macro environment in which we all navigate. As you could see, merchant services is growing double-digit, the fourth quarter in a row of strong growth. It is fueled by past and current market share gain. It is fueled by the revenue synergies within Ingenico and the relevance of the Worldline extended value proposition in the market that is more and more visible. While FS and MeTS posted growth in line with their full-year trajectory. Second is clearly the strong benefit of our product innovation positioning.
This is more and more a clear key differentiating factor in the reason for which we wins RFPs or even potential strategic bank partnerships. It is fueled by in-house innovation, illustrated, for example, by the win of Lufthansa or the Zebra partnership that Marc-Henri commented sooner. It is also set to be increased by targeted technology acquisitions, as seen today with SoftPos and BPP, and that you remember as part of the plan we presented during the CMD. Third, consolidation. Our positioning to pursue the market consolidation is better than ever. The TSS disposal clearly increases further our strategic flexibility to pursue our European consolidation ambition. There are many active opportunities in Europe as we speak, that we are currently pursuing, and we are totally confident that Worldline is the best suited to take advantage of most of them.
Our game remains to create a pretty unique combination in Europe of innovation, distribution power, and industrial scale to create leading positions in every European country. Of course, further improving this positioning by converting our active pipeline of M&A opportunities. Today's results are, I believe, overall one more proof point of the solid execution of our vision. Now to end this presentation, and as I said, I confirm our 2022 guidance, 8%-10% revenue organic growth, an OMDA margin improvement between 100 basis points and 150 basis points, and finally an OMDA conversion rate into free cash flow of circa 45%.
Given our performance year to date and the current macro context with robust transaction volumes so far on our platform but accelerated inflation on cost, organic growth is expected at the top end of the range, while OMDA margin improvement should be at the low end of the bracket. Thank you very much for your attention, and I am now ready with Marc-Henri and Gregory to take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. The first question we are taking now. Please stand by. The first question from Frédéric Boulan from Bank of America.
Hey, good morning. I'm not sure if you can hear me.
Yes, very well. Go on, Frédéric.
Great. There you go. Just a quick question on my side around your last comment on your outlook for the year. You've already performed very well year to date in terms of revenue growth. What are the assumptions you're taking in terms of guidance? If we look at the high end, even 10%, that implies a pretty sharp slowdown in the fourth quarter. Last year we had only COVID in December impacting volumes. What are the moving parts? Is this something we can reach in the tough macro and if the macro outlook is in the end more benign, there is some upside to that. Just trying to see what are the assumptions within that. In particular, if you can give us an update more around cross-border and travel volumes. How trends are, have evolved or evolving, how you see trends going into next year. Thank you.
Hello, Frédéric. Good morning. Maybe I will take the question. Indeed, if we look at the performance here today, as you rightly pinpointed, it is a very solid organic performance. Fueled, as I mentioned, by definitely market share developments and of course, so far, a pretty solid domestic consumption in Europe that we could measure through our transaction volumes. This said, indeed, if we were to project just the world as we saw it over the first nine months into Q4, most probably, we could totally agree that there is no reason to anticipate any particular slowdown in MS activities.
Still, while like yourself, we see all the macroeconomic concerns around the uncertainties, the constant messaging coming from any public authority around risk of recession, energy prices skyrocketing, potentially, many debates in many countries around the way this could be shielded or accommodated by public budgets. We decided very consciously not to take any particular risk in the guidance in this particular context. I assume that we have taken a very cautious stance on year-end spending that are very important in the business, as you know, such as Christmas, discretionary spending, potential year-end travel. On all these things, we decided not to take any bet. We know that we've been performing well, that we will end up probably in any case at the top end of the guidance, maybe higher if things were really good.
We just don't know today, and we don't want to embark on any risk in the trajectory of the company. Our central scenario is clearly, as I mentioned, to be at the top end of this bracket in the world we see today. That's for sure. Not embarking on any additional bet for next year, for the next one. Fundamentally, you know, we plan for the worst, and we hope for the best.
Okay, great. Any specific comments around travel trends?
Well, so far it has been still solid. Q3 was really excellent from a travel point of view. As we speak, we do not observe yet any slowdown. The levels of bookings are good. Now the year is not over, so we'll see. At this stage, the levels remain good and the bookings remain good.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking our next question. Please stand by. The next question from James Goodman for Barclays. Please go ahead.
Oh, yes. Great. Morning. Thank you very much. I'll go for a couple as well, please. Firstly, just on, I guess the comment, Gilles, you made around strategic bank partnerships, but of course, there's a lot in the pipeline. We've read recently about some negotiations with Crédit Agricole. I appreciate you can't comment, you know, specifically on when any one potential transaction. Just in terms of directionally what something like this might involve. In the past, we've seen, you know, a failed provider and partner on online payments specifically, and we've seen banks like Crédit Agricole focusing on, in France, their online presence. Would that be the focus of these sorts of partnerships, or could it involve, you know, more of the commercialization of the fuller merchant book?
That's the first question. Second question, just around Germany, actually. I mean, the Lufthansa win very encouraging in the quarter. Interesting context there. We've seen Fiserv and Deutsche Bank announce a partnership, obviously other vendors aggressively pursuing growth in Germany. Does the win like Lufthansa help with your competitive position in Germany? And any update there? Thank you.
Hi, James. As you can guess, I certainly will not venture myself indeed into commenting on any type of market speculation. Your question is giving me a great opportunity to expand my observations answering your question on what is actually happening in the European landscape, particularly from large leading domestic banks in many countries. As I mentioned, we have a pretty active pipeline of discussions. More or less, all of them having some common ingredients. The first one is there is a genuine recognition by banks that their technology is not allowing them to perform as they would like in their respective markets. One of the first reasons for which they engage with a company like Worldline is accessing our technology for their domestic market development and keeping solid merchant relationships. That's number one.
It is true for our POS technology, but also true for our eCom capabilities. It is, in general, true also for three other things we can bring in the equation. One was visibly demonstrated today is the verticalization of our offerings that are more and more relevant, particularly for tier two and tier one customers in many verticals that banks don't have these type of offerings. Number two is the ability to cope with this very small end of the market, the micro merchants. Different technologies, of course, is a good example. And the third one, of course, is the access that Worldline provides to a very vast range of payment methods, payment scheme, payment solutions, which is also more and more important in this world where merchants are facing customers from many different countries. That's number one, the need for technology.
Number two is, of course, our genuine interest to expand our distribution network. As I mentioned more regularly, the merchant acquiring business is a very powerful. The winning recipe for merchant services is a combination of technology and distribution at scale. There is a genuine way to work with banks, which is to leverage the power of their brands and distribution if you provide them with the good products and technology. This is a common theme across Europe. That's my message today. Whatever you may read somewhere, keep in mind that it will be always for us, the way we look at it is combining our really leading technology with a new channel to distribute the Worldline technology.
Third, what is important is that, depending on circumstances, this may imply an M&A transaction or the acquisition of the merchant book, the back book. It may imply the setup of a partnership. It may take the form of a JV. Well, my answer here is any transaction is always made to measure to make sure that both parties find what they are looking for. We are not done at all with the European consolidation. I love this moment where Worldline is not only searching for its balance sheet, but more and more for the quality of its technology. That is where we are, and that is making us extremely strong in the current environment. Regarding Germany, I don't know, Marc-Henri, if you want to-
I think James was asking, if I understood well, is the Lufthansa signature a sign of a reinforcement of our position in Germany. To give a simple answer, no. In fact, you know, our position in Germany is very strong. I think we are number one on the German market through Payone. It has delivered superbly. It continued to deliver superbly. But the Lufthansa deal isn't due to the German positioning. It is due much more to the fact we are multi-country in Europe. You know, in the Lufthansa Group, it's a group deal. So you have Brussels Airlines, you have Swiss International Air Lines, you have also Austrian Airlines in Austria.
It's about having the ability to be super good in these various markets, to be able to combine all of them, and to serve the global platform. Traveler from all around the world, having all the payment needs consolidated in one online solution, connected to all the best industry platforms in terms of airline booking systems and others. It's really owed to this global positioning connected to our local acquiring. It's a worldwide win. It's both a Pan-European and a worldwide win. It's not particularly related to our strength in Germany. This being said, our strength in Germany is not ambiguous, and we have delivered a very good performance again in this quarter with Payone.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking our next question. The next question from Sandeep Deshpande from JP Morgan.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for letting me on. Can you hear me?
Very well, Sandeep. Good morning.
Good morning. My question is, I mean, you've done a lot of deals, in terms of consolidating the markets in Germany, in some of these other regions. Now, where is your focus here now? The recent deals look like more tech deals that you've done in adding technology capability to the company, in terms of marketplaces, as well as now the recent deal to acquire the software for the terminals. So maybe, we can understand your thinking process here as such, maybe what your thought process is. The second, quick follow-up I have is on the, merchant services business. I mean, when we look at your growth in merchant services, it indeed does seem to suggest that you're gaining share in your most important market, and maybe you can walk us through what you think is making that happen.
Thank you, Sandeep, for both questions. I will start maybe by the first one, and maybe Marc-Henri or Grégory can elaborate after me. Well, clearly, we try to stick to what we shared with you guys during our Capital Markets Day. We said indeed, we took leading position in number of European countries. Now, there are still some large countries that stayed clearly outside of the first wave of consolidation in Europe. Bank having been sticking for years to the way they were doing the business in the past. It is a two-stage of view. Country like Portugal, like Iberia, of course, on the west side of Europe, France is still in this setup.
If you go to Sweden, you would find still some relatively large banks that are all still operating their payment more or less by themselves, and it is true in some other places in Europe. You still have roughly, let's say, between 40%-50% of payment volume that are still in-house in banks or done by the banks with the support of multiple technology vendors. Those are clear areas where we can have this type of discussion taking place, logically enough. That's, I would say, the traditional avenue of the M&A execution of Worldline, looking at these bank partnerships, combining our technology and their distribution power, as I mentioned earlier, answering James.
Now, it's true that as we said during the CMD, we feel that thanks to the work we do on our processing platform and the convergence that has been executed, post-Equens, post-SIX Payment Services, and where we stand today in the integration of the Ingenico platforms, we believe we are in a position where we can really leverage targeted technology acquisitions. That we can give them the scale they are looking for and that we are looking for by plugging them through our core platforms and giving access to this solution to a much wider number of customers. This is exactly the point behind SoftPos and OPP. Definitely, you can expect more of this type of technology-related acquisition when we feel we have a gap in our portfolio.
There are not that many gaps, but we are not also the guys that are going to say that we're gonna develop everything in-house. There are brilliant companies out there that have been engaging in specific areas of the market. To state the obvious these days, given the evolution and the turmoil in the way scale-ups or small companies can raise funds, there may be opportunities in the current environment where we can be also seen as a strategic alternative for their development, rather than hoping for an IPO or to do a new fundraising round with their VCs. It's why we don't want to miss that. We feel we are ready for that, and stay tuned. Regarding the MeTS performance, maybe Marc-Henri and Grégory, you can say a couple of words on market share momentum.
We believe we are more in a market share winning position on some recent markets or markets where we are not yet the dominant player, let's say. Typically Italy and Greece. Greece, you know, it's a recent acquisition, Italy as well, and they were also super well supported by the summer season. Germany is also an area where the performance of the team is bringing some market share gains. In geographies like Benelux and Switzerland, we are more benefiting from the cash to card conversion as we already have a very very wide market share, I would say. That's, I would say in a summary is the big picture.
Thank you.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking our next question. Please stand by. The next question from Alexandre from Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for letting me on. I've got two questions. One for Grégory. I think you said, commenting on your slide that the pipeline in financial services was very solid with a number of large deals with signing expected by the end of the year. Just as a definition, what should we think of when you say large? Is it triple-digit TCV kind of territory? The second question was coming back on the capital allocation discussion. I think, Gilles, you talked about relatively small scale M&A in technology. You talked about bank partnerships. But outside of that, I mean, where do you see opportunities to spend, I would say a vast amount of capital? Should we expect perhaps at some point, Worldline to start paying a dividend, which I think was being mentioned at IPO time?
Hello, Alexandre. Grégory or Marc-Henri on the line.
Sure. I mean, Alex, on the FS pipeline, the large deals we're thinking about are indeed in the triple digit territory. They're opportunities we've been working on for some time now. We have a good momentum. As I said, we hope to sign, we hope signing can occur before year-end, so stay tuned.
Thanks, Grégory. Well, regarding capital allocation, to be frank, when we look at the pipeline currently, and if we were successful to convert everything, Alexandre, I believe the question to use our, as you call it, vast financial firepower, would be relatively easy to answer. I think, for the time being, the board of directors does consider that M&A has to stay as a vibrant priority of capital allocation for the group, and it will stay so. Of course, as we always said, the day we start to see that, we have largely executed on that plan, of course, dividend could be a valid discussion at board and shareholder level or even share buyback. For the time being, M&A is the number one priority for capital allocation, and we are confident that there should be plenty of opportunities to use value for Worldline shareholders.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking our next question, so please stand by. The next question from Tammy Qiu from Berenberg.
Thank you for taking my question. I have one on the margin. With everything being more expensive, I would expect your business operating expenses will be more expensive, as it is today versus first half of the year. How should we be thinking about your target of expanding OMDA margin as previously indicated?
Hello, Tammy. Today as we mentioned earlier, we are pretty confident in the margin level expected for the year and for H2, should I say, given the 80 basis points increase published in H1. As we all know, there has been a higher than anticipated inflation accelerating throughout the year, coming on top of the important impact of Russia since the beginning of the year. Just to remind you, we have stopped overnight a business representing 2.5% of our MS revenues with a lucrative profitability rate.
We are handling the situation with both cost measures and progressive repricing, including cost frugality, in particular on the corporate side and on support function, in order to preserve the strategic investments to fuel the top line momentum for 2023, in order to keep the speed of execution we've had over 2022. In terms of inflation assumptions, what we're taking is low to single digit for salaries depending on geographies and teams, and probably half that in terms of non-personal costs, given the fact that not all contracts are being renewed.
Okay, thank you. Also, another one is on, going into next year, of course, the travel comp will be harder because travel had a very strong recovery in this year. I would expect, potentially we're going to see some kind of negative impact from inflation from a customer spending perspective and also probably e-commerce can return a little bit. Can you just talk about, the puts and takes for what we can see in 2023, please?
Well, to be frank, Tammy, I would be inclined to give you a rendezvous in February to discuss 2023. As we speak, we are actually in the phase where we are crafting the budget for next year. As I mentioned sooner, we are very careful in looking at the development over the winter period before taking any final stance where we could see the level of activity in Europe in particular and beyond. You're right that there will be some comps that will be maybe less favorable. I speak with conditional here. We just don't know. We have seen very enthusiastic behaviors of consumers as soon as pressure of COVID was released.
We cannot exclude that if the global geopolitical situation evolve positively, these behaviors should stay. On the other hand, for Worldline, there will be less tough comps next year. In particular, the Russia story will be behind us, and if one day we get back to a type of normal situation, it could even become a plus if we were to reactivate this corridor way too soon to tell. We will have fully digested the pain coming from the financial services division with the synchronized renewal of the Equens contract. That would be also a comp that would not be part of the trajectory of 2023. I believe that overall there are good news and of course unknowns, right. Let's see. Let's have the rendezvous for 2023 in due time in February.
At this stage, when we are looking at our multi-year trajectory, given what we have in our hands, given the strength of the franchise we've been building over years, we see no reason at this moment in time to change our stance versus what we shared with you for our three-year plan in terms of overarching trajectory.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, I think it will be time to close the call. Maybe we can take one last question.
Okay. We are now taking our last question, so please stand by. The last question from Michael Briest from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for getting me on. Just some sort of chronology or history on the Lufthansa deal. If I look at their revenues, it's about EUR 35 billion, hopefully in 2023, of which EUR 25 billion is passenger volumes. How quickly do you expect to onboard that? Can you say something about you know, how long this deal took, the competitive players that you were up against? Then from a sort of customer standpoint, how does it compare to your other customers? Do you have other large you know, businesses like this in your pipeline that you might hope to sign next year? Thanks.
In positioning in the pipeline, we have another similar deal of similar magnitude in the pipeline in this industry. We also have existing positions. You know, this platform has been developed over time, reinforced recently, but we really think we have—it's a very strong platform that we could not fully push during the COVID time, both because indeed there was some travel constraint, but also for risk reasons at that time.
This being said on the timing of the deal itself, to sign it, I must say, the competitive process was facing big international U.S. players, usual suspects and big European incumbents as well. The process was pretty thorough and pretty, I mean, Lufthansa took its time to go in depth in understanding the value of the proposition of each player. That was not so long. What was quite long is the finalization of contract because Lufthansa is a very careful player and wants to have things very, very much clarified. On the ramping up of volumes, it will depends on also their ability to connect their own platforms and components. There will be various steps in the integrations. It's a bit soon to give a detailed curve, but that will be progressive over the months to come.
If I have understood well, Marc-Henri Desportes, this is also like a framework contract that can be joined by other subsidiaries and other brand of the Lufthansa family, and that can get on board the-
It will be subsidiary by subsidiary. That's why I mentioned the connection indeed, because it's not like one. It's a single system on Lufthansa side. It's a group of company and each company has to connect its own systems.
Michael, indeed, now it is a real flagship contract in this industry. There are not that many companies bigger than Lufthansa in the airline world. But the good news is there are hopefully more to come. It is a real testimony of the global competitive positioning of Worldline beyond the European entity. In that case, the game is truly global, and it is to serve global volumes. It is
Thank you.
A clear deal that we are very proud of for the MS teams and digital commerce that was really driving this effort from A to Z.
Thank you very much, guys.
Yeah, please.
What I was gonna say, do you think?
No, Michael, please go on. Sorry, you were cut. Okay. Guys, many thanks for being with us this morning. Super appreciated. Looking forward to our next interaction altogether and, of course, rendezvous then in February for the full year. Bye-bye.
That concludes the conference. You may all disconnect.