Santander appoints Nicole Mantow as head of Pagonxt in Germany.
(Photo: Evo Paymants International)
Madrid, New York Almost two years after the major Spanish bank Santander took over the technology platform of the insolvent German payment service provider Wirecard, the business is getting its own boss. As of October 1st, Nicole Mantow will become Managing Director of Pagonxt Merchant Solutions in Germany.
Pagonxt is a fintech in which Santander brings together its various payment service providers worldwide. Santander confirmed the personnel on the Handelsblatt request.
Mantow is new to Pagonxt and does not come from the Wirecard scandal group, which went under in 2020 in the course of a multi-billion dollar fraud scandal. Santander completed the takeover of the Wirecard remnants at the end of January 2021, but initially had significant problems with it.
The approximately 500 Wirecard employees who were taken over lacked a clear perspective on how to proceed and complained that, in the absence of their own boss, well-known managers from the Wirecard years continued to run the business.
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In fact, there were numerous examples of members of the old leadership who had come to Santander. Many had worked closely with the imprisoned CEO Markus Braun, the fugitive Asia boss Jan Marsalek or other board members who are being investigated today. The Verdi union criticized cheating, overwork and a problematic leadership culture.
Officially, the Spaniard Ignacio Narvarte, Managing Director of Pagonxt, was responsible for the new acquisition based in Aschheim near Munich. But he always had to fly in from Madrid.
Appointment goes down well with employees
That’s over now. “I’m excited to see where she will take and expand our company,” Narvarte wrote in a digital letter to the employees, in which he announced the personnel. The letter is available to the Handelsblatt.
Mantow’s appointment was received as a positive signal among the employees in Aschheim. “We experienced a lot of layoffs over the summer, people no longer have patience,” said one voice. It is good that the new boss comes from the start-up sector and not from the old Wirecard universe. “We hope that Ms. Mantow will finally be on the up.”
Mantow was CEO and Managing Director of the payment service providers HRS Payment Solutions and Invisible Pay in Cologne until the end of 2021. The 51-year-old previously worked for various payment providers, including eleven years at Concardis. “Nicole brings over 20 years of international finance and payments experience and brings a thorough understanding of payments from many angles, including sales, operations, products, marketing and more,” said Santander.
Santander founded Pagonxt at the end of 2020 and is thus active as a payment service provider for private individuals, for merchants and for small and medium-sized companies that do business in different currency areas.
The business division with payment transactions for retailers operates under the name Getnet, belongs to Pagonxt and has taken over the Wirecard remnants. Getnet increased its dealer sales by 50 percent to 116 billion euros last year. By 2024, Getnet aims to become one of the top five e-commerce payment processors in Europe, according to internal plans seen by Handelsblatt.
When building up the business, they will rely on the “technology assets purchased from Wirecard,” said Santander CFO José García Cantera last year. What was meant by this was the real European business of the payment service provider, not the largely fictitious Asian business. Its discovery led to Wirecard’s bankruptcy in 2020.
More: Santander – the unloved savior of the Wirecard business