Thanks to our investment in our team’s talents, competencies, and technology, we stand out as one of Italy’s leading paytech companies when it comes to digital innovation in the payment industry. To us, Open Innovation is not only perfectly in line with our core values, but it is also key to succeeding in a market as brutally competitive and constantly evolving as the payment industry is.

Through Open Innovation initiatives, we aim to generate a long-term, positive effect on business growth by taking innovation and diversification opportunities while strengthening our Group’s Equity Brand.

In particular, we set three main goals to achieve through digital innovation:

• – Extending an innovation culture and an entrepreneurial approach to all levels of our business;
• – Extending an innovation culture and an entrepreneurial approach to all levels of our business;
• – Identifying and fostering new business diversification opportunities.

Our approach to Digital Transformation and Open Innovation is both organic and articulate. We foster these values both in the market by benchmarking and challenging our competitors, and internally by working on dedicated system- and product-innovation processes and launching in-house startups such as EasyCassa.

Specifically, our Open Innovation strategy centers around three main activities:

• – Startup screening and scouting – regular, detailed tracking of all the innovative trends and the most promising Italian and international startups on the market. With this purpose in mind, we take part in programs, such as Startup Intelligence by Polytechnic University of Milan, which aim at facilitating shared experiences between the startup world and their sponsor businesses, while raising awareness on topics such as technological innovation and business digitalisation.
• – Partnering with key players in the innovation industry – we actively contribute to the Italian startup world by engaging with digitally innovative entrepreneurs and identifying potential areas in which to collaborate. For instance, we are partners with the Digital Magics business incubator, and co-fund “Magic Wand”, an acceleration program dedicated to digital startups in the Fintech, Insurtech, Cybersecurity, Blockchain, and Retail industries.
• – Merging, acquiring, and partnering with startups – we invest in equity and/or create business partnerships and joint ventures with digitally innovative startups. For example, we have recently acquired a majority share of MyCicero, a very active startup in digital mobility and transport payments. Furthermore, we signed a partnership with GrowishPay, an e-wallet social-payment solutions industry leader in Italian fintech. This also allowed us to enter the digital payments market dedicated to schools on ScuolaPay’s platform.