BNP Paribas is buying online retail banking service Financiere des Paiements Electroniques, as a step towards the bank’s efforts in hiking its investments in the digital banking sector. Financiere des Paiements Electroniques provides payments accounts for Compte Nickel, an online French retail banking service. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by the companies. Compete-Nickel has been hugely popular since launch 3 years ago. Customers can open an account, get an IBAN and receive an International MasterCard at a newsagent in less than 10 minutes. The firm says it is registering a new account opening every 30 seconds and currently has 540,000 customers using the service, which provides a no-frills online deposit account and real-time payments processing. The firm intends to open 2 million accounts by 2020.
