DUBAI. “Digital payments is a segment in which we want to grow, through industrial partnerships, joint ventures or even acquisitions”. Something concrete in this sense “will be seen in the first months of next year at the latest”.
The guidelines
Quang Ngo Dinh, CEO of Olivetti, on the occasion of the “Smart Cities in Olivetti’s view” Event, held in the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2020 in Dubai, lined up the development guidelines of what, even in the common imagination, represents a company emblem of the Italian economic miracle, which has led the country into modernity and now grappling with a future to be built as for the other digital product factories of the Tim group.
And that of digital payments will be one of the axes of Olivetti’s future, suggests the 43-year-old manager at the helm since September, after experiences in Vodafone and Alitalia and joining Tim in September 2019. Olivetti, explains the CEO, does not start from scratch on digital payments, but will leverage on a “core” asset: that of cash registers revisited in a modern key with the ability to line up data on data. Which, Ngo Dinh points out, “is enhanced by being part of a group that provides connectivity and data management”. This is how the sims (obviously Tim, but which represent a third of the market and therefore able to act as a basis for statistical forecasts) can return the image of stops, exits, entrances in front of shops, timetables, traffic flows. And the ability to manage this data “can allow us – says the CEO – to carve out a space in a market where we see room for growth”.
Model
How much alongside or in competition with subjects such as Nexi or SamUp, or even Zucchetti (software for the management of company resources), will be worth seeing. However, the intention to accelerate is evidently there, confirming a path of evolution that has had a first important step with the agreement with Satispay (the Tim group is also a shareholder with about 10%) which provides for the payment app also in the new cash registers as well as the diffusion of Satispay in the Olivetti sales network.
The evolution in the digital payments sector, however, clearly has at the base the push on the core business of the IoT, a segment that Olivetti has decided to tackle also by looking around. In this context, Ngo Dinh recalled the industrial partnership with Seco from Arezzo (listed on Piazza Affari, 76.1 million in revenues and a profit of 5.5 million in 2020, of which Olivetti has 9.6%) and acquisition of the Roman Staer Sistemi: system integrator and product developer in the industrial IoT field with a production value of 3.24 million euros at the end of 2020, but very specialized, with annual investments of around 10% of turnover.