US payment terminals vendor Verifone Systems is to acquire Swedish company Point, Northern Europe’s leading provider of electronic payment solutions for retailers. Among the services offered by Point are mobile payments in addition to point-of-sale terminals, gateway services, card encryption and e-commerce. Verifone will pay about EUR600 million to acquire all Point’s equity plus pay off approximately EUR170 million of the Swedish firm’s debt.  The US company is acquiring Point from Nordic Capital, a private-equity firm. Point serves 475,000 merchants in 11 European countries including the UK, Norway and Sweden.

Two months ago Verifone CEO Douglas Bergeron (pictured) said the US firm could spend up to US$1 billion annually on acquisitions. The vendor was looking at one US$500 million to US$700 million deal per year, he said plus a number of small acquisitions. The Point deal, which is priced at US$820 million plus US$230 million of debt writeoff, safely qualifies as Verifone’s big deal for 2011. That the acquisition was in Europe is not surprising given the region is Verifone’s fast growing.