In a Transaction Agreement and Shareholders' Agreement, both signed on 12 August 2016, PostFinance and SIX agreed to combine their complementary mobile payment systems TWINT 1.0 and Paymit in a joint venture, together with the five largest Swiss banks, Credit Suisse, UBS, PostFinance, Raiffeisen, and Zürcher Kantonalbank, along with the Banque Cantonale Vaudoise (BCV). The transaction was successfully completed in a complex eight parties' closing in Zurich on 30 September 2016.

TWINT 2.0 will be the leading Swiss mobile payment solution, as an alternative and Swiss counterweight to mobile payment solutions currently being offered by international providers, such as Apple, Samsung, and Google. TWINT 2.0 will allow for payments on a smartphone or tablet PC via a suitable payment App. TWINT 2.0 is independent of any platform and will allow consumers to link the App to their bank accounts, credit or prepaid cards, as well as to load a certain amount of money onto the App in advance. To this end, a number of technical solutions for payments will be implemented, such as payments via Bluetooth and QR codes. In addition, it is also planned to implement contactless payments via the NFC communication protocol.

The Schellenberg Wittmer competition team (Jürg Borer, David Mamane and Amalie Wijesundera) was in the lead of the merger control proceedings in Switzerland and in the EU, with the assistance of Linklaters. Our Corporate/M&A team (Martin Weber, Mirjam Schneider, assisted by Béatrice Siedpar-Wenger and Dumeng Bezzola) was acting as lead transaction counsel in charge of the drafting and multi-party negotiation process for the Transaction Agreement and the Shareholders' Agreement and all ancillary documents.