In a move that will impact retailers throughout Northern Europe and beyond, VeriFone Systems, Inc. has completed its acquisition of Point today. Point is the largest provider of payment and gateway services and solutions for retailers in Northern Europe.

Stockholm-based Point has operations in 11 countries throughout Europe, serving a captive network of nearly 475,000 merchant contracts. The network enables Point to offer retailers a portfolio of multi-channel services and solutions.

Point offerings include point-of-sale technology and support as well as gateway services, card encryption services and e-commerce processing. As part of VeriFone, the company will extend Point's platform throughout Northern Europe and beyond. VeriFone aims to create the world's largest infrastructure for rapid deployment of alternative payments as well as NFC mobile commerce.

VeriFone already holds a major stake in the secure electronic payment solutions market. The company offers expertise, services and solutions to add value to the point of sale. These include merchant-operated, consumer-facing and self-service payment systems geared toward the financial, government, healthcare, retail, hospitality and petroleum industries, as well as a number of other vertical markets.

VeriFone executed a $1.5 billion credit agreement to finance the Point acquisition in addition to refinancing existing debt. The funding was led by J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, Wells Fargo (News - Alert) Securities, LLC, Barclays Capital and RBC Capital Markets.

The move provides VeriFone with long-term debt capital at economical interest rates. VeriFone will honor five-year Term A loans for $918.5 million, a five-year revolving line of credit for $350 million and seven-year Term B loans totaling $231.5 million. A previously arranged credit facility has already been repaid in full, and a portion of the proceeds will pay off the company's outstanding 1.375 percent convertible notes due in June of this year.

“This acquisition supports our vision of offering retailers everywhere a managed service to easily accept all existing payment types, including the evolving alternative and mobile payment methods being offered by traditional card brands and new entrants such as Google, PayPal (News - Alert), Groupon and Isis,” said Douglas G. Bergeron, CEO of VeriFone. “The new entrants can take advantage of easy and accelerated access to VeriFone's worldwide installation of more than 20 million merchant lanes.”