Nexi

Nexi S.p.A. is an Italian payments group headquartered in Milan and listed on Borsa Italiana as part of the FTSE MIB index. It traces back to Istituto Centrale delle Banche Popolari Italiane, founded in 1939, and reached its current scale through the 2021 merger with the Danish group Nets and the integration of SIA — which is why it now runs card issuing, merchant acquiring, and clearing infrastructure across Italy, the Nordics, and central Europe rather than in one market.

For a merchant it is closer to a traditional acquirer than to a developer-first API: e-commerce gateways, POS terminals, and bank-integrated payment infrastructure, often sold through partner banks. That makes it a realistic Stripe or PayPal replacement for businesses with physical locations alongside an online store, and less of a fit for a developer wanting an SDK and a dashboard in an afternoon.

The infrastructure is genuinely its own — Nexi’s public services resolve to Italian IP ranges registered to the company itself, under its former ICBPI name, not to a hyperscaler. Ownership is dispersed with no controlling holder: the two largest shareholders are a Hellman & Friedman vehicle at roughly 20% and the Italian state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti at roughly 19%, with CDP having moved in 2026 to raise its stake toward 29.9% — a decision framed in Italy as keeping the country’s payment infrastructure out of private-equity control.