Hitachi Moves into Cash Services

Hitachi Payment Services, India’s leading integrated payment solutions provider and a subsidiary of the Japanese multinational technology conglomeration Hitachi, has entered into an agreement to acquire the cash management business of Writer Safeguard from its parent, the Writer Corporation.

Writer Safeguard has been providing comprehensive cash services, including ATM cash replenishment and retail cash pick-up services, to corporate clients in India since 2001. It has a network of nearly 40,000 touchpoints including ATMs and retail spanning 25 states across 1,500 locations serviced by a workforce of over 10,000 people.

Hitachi Payment Services, formerly known as Prizm Payments, was acquired by Hitachi in 2013. It manages a network of over 66,000 ATMs (including 27,500 cash recycling machines) and 9,300 white label ATMs. It also offers POS solutions, toll and transit solutions, payment gateway solutions, and a next-gen mobile-based merchant platform. It caters to over 3 million merchant touchpoints and processes more than 7 million digital transactions daily.

According to Hitachi Payments, the acquisition will transform its market standing by integrating the cash management business into its overall service offerings, positioning it as a one-stop payments and commerce solutions provider. It will enable Hitachi Payments to provide comprehensive ATM services to financial institutions, complement the company’s digital offerings on the merchant side, and offer a unified and single platform for all merchant-related payment and commerce needs.

Hitachi’s terminal solutions business is headquartered in Tokyo, with a network of subsidiaries in the ASEAN region and the US. It is a leading supplier of ATMs, having entered the market in the late 1970s, and is the successor to Hitachi Omron Terminal Solutions, itself a merger in 2004 between Hitachi and Omron, making the combined entity the fourth largest ATM manufacturer at the time behind NCR, Diebold and Wincor Nixdorf, and the market leader in recycling systems in Asia. It was renamed Hitachi Channel Solutions in 2021.

Completion of the acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions.