Ingenico Brand Guidelines: A Suresnes Terminal Maker, Worldline & Apollo

Two founders and a chip-card terminal.

Ingenico was founded in France in 1980 by Jean-Jacques Poutrel and Michel Malhouitre, according to English and French Wikipedia and the company’s own history. It is based in Suresnes, in the Hauts-de-Seine just west of Paris. French Wikipedia says that in 1984 it brought out its first terminal able to read both magnetic-stripe and chip cards; the company describes 1984 as the year it deployed its first payment terminal with a chip reader.

It went to the stock market early. French Wikipedia says Ingenico joined the second market of the Paris exchange in 1985 and moved to the official list in 1987, the year the company says it opened its first subsidiary, in Australia. Through the 1990s and early 2000s it grew mainly by buying other terminal businesses. French Wikipedia lists Innovatron Data Systems and EPOS in 1996, the Fortronic terminal business of the British firm De La Rue and the Telesincro business of Bull in 1999, and the American company IVI Checkmate in 2001.

In 2008 Ingenico bought Sagem Monetel from Safran, which became a shareholder. French Wikipedia says Ingenico then closed its historic research centre in Barcelona, which had developed its terminal range, and adopted the Sagem platform instead. The same year it took a majority stake in the Chinese terminal maker Fujian Landi — 55%, English Wikipedia says — and the company’s timeline marks 2008 as the year of its expansion into China. French Wikipedia adds that at the end of 2010 the French government asked Safran not to sell its stake in Ingenico to the American group Danaher, which then dropped a planned takeover bid.

From the counter to payment services.

From the late 2000s Ingenico reached beyond the shop counter. In 2009 it bought the German payment services company Easycash, and the same year, English Wikipedia says, it joined its two largest competitors, Hypercom and VeriFone, to found the Secure POS Vendor Alliance, a non-profit industry group. In 2013 it bought the Belgian online-payments company Ogone, which became Ingenico Payment Services in 2014. French Wikipedia adds GlobalCollect of the Netherlands in 2014, with the two grouped as Ingenico ePayments from 2016. In 2017 came the Swedish payments group Bambora, then the electronic payment business of IECISA in Spain and the Asian distributor Airlink.

The identity changed with that shift. In June 2014, PYMNTS reported, Ingenico launched a new visual identity and a new name, Ingenico Group, with the tagline “global leader in seamless payment”; the redesigned logo was meant to reflect the company’s global standing and its work across several sales channels. The company’s own timeline marks 2014 as the year it became Ingenico Group and launched its TETRA offer.

Its terminals take several forms. The company’s current website groups them as portable, countertop, retail PIN pad, retail mobility, self-service and integrated point-of-sale devices, under two main ranges: TETRA and AXIUM, an Android-based platform the company dates to 2021. English Wikipedia also notes the Lane series of retail terminals, documented in US FCC filings including the Lane/3000 in 2018, and the AXIUM DX8000. At the EuroCIS retail-technology fair in Düsseldorf in February 2025, the German trade title IT Finanzmagazin reported, Ingenico showed the AXIUM CX9000, an all-in-one point-of-sale unit that combines payment, till functions and stock management in one device, and the Android-based AXIUM SX5000 for self-checkout.

How terminal makers present themselves.

Payment terminals are made to be handled, and their makers tend to show them in use: a countertop unit beside a till, a PIN pad turned towards the shopper, a portable terminal carried to a restaurant table, an unattended reader fitted to a vending machine or a fuel pump. Product pictures move between that wider scene and the close-up — a card or a phone held over the contactless symbol, a receipt coming out of the printer, a total on the screen. Some pages open a device up into an exploded diagram of casing, screen, keypad and board.

Much of what these companies sell cannot be photographed at all. Their websites set hardware beside software, device management and payment services. Ingenico’s current site groups its devices by use — portable, countertop, PIN pad, mobile, self-service — before it names a range, and Verifone’s places its Victa devices alongside software, payment processing and controllers for fuel stations.

The trade meets at fairs, and launches are timed to them. Verifone presented its new identity in November 2014 in the same week as Money20/20 in Las Vegas and the CARTES show in Paris, according to the consultancy that designed it, and Ingenico showed new terminals at EuroCIS, the retail-technology fair in Düsseldorf, in February 2025, the German trade title IT Finanzmagazin reported.

Ingenico and Verifone have each changed owners more than once and kept their names. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker — who founded it, who owns it, which ranges it sells and how its identity has changed — and keeps the companies’ own claims apart from what independent sources report.

Two owners in three years.

In February 2020 the French payments company Worldline announced it would acquire Ingenico, English and French Wikipedia say. French Wikipedia says the Ingenico Group company became Worldline IGSA, and Ingenico’s terminals were combined with Worldline’s own in a business line called Worldline Terminals, Solutions & Services, or TSS; the company’s timeline describes 2020 as the year Ingenico joined Worldline.

The arrangement was short. In February 2022 Worldline entered exclusive talks with Apollo Global Management to sell that business line, Ingenico included, and the sale closed on 3 October 2022, according to English Wikipedia. Two days later the trade site The Paypers reported that Ingenico now ran as an independent company owned by Apollo funds, with plans to shift its mix towards software and cloud services built on AXIUM, terminals offered as a service and a payments-platform service, and with new members on its supervisory board. French Wikipedia cites Les Échos, which described the sale as the end of an industrial story in which France had built a world leader.

Under its new owner Ingenico bought Phos in March 2023, English Wikipedia and the company say; Ingenico describes Phos as a provider of software-only point-of-sale payment, or SoftPOS. French Wikipedia lists its chief executives since the sale as Matthieu Destot from 2022, Laurent Blanchard from 2023 and Floris De Kort from 2025. The company says it has about 3,000 employees in 52 offices across 32 countries, and that its solutions are deployed in more than 120 countries.

For a design guide, Ingenico shows how a terminal maker’s name can outlast its changes of owner: founded in France, briefly part of Worldline, now held by American investment funds, and still trading as Ingenico. Compare Worldline, its owner from 2020 to 2022, and Verifone, a fellow founder of the Secure POS Vendor Alliance. For this guide we use a deep navy, a muted teal and a receipt white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Ingenico’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.