Worldline - 2019 Universal Registration Document

F

RISK ANALYSIS Mitigation measures

To mitigate risks, the procurement process integrates the quality, cost, delivery, innovation, management and sustainability criteria. To assist in this risk mitigation, the Group receives regular assessments of its suppliers on corporate social responsibility risks from EcoVadis. For details, please refer to Section D.4.2 “Ethics in the supply chain”. Intellectual Property F.3.1.6 The Group relies on a combination of contractual rights and copyright, trademark, patent and trade secret laws to establish and protect the Group’s proprietary technology. Third parties may challenge, invalidate, circumvent, infringe or misappropriate the Group’s intellectual property. In order to mitigate the intellectual property risk, the Group has rolled out a specific intellectual property governance and is providing dedicated resources which are entrusted with the implementation of appropriate policies and processes, and a strong worldwide patent applications filings campaign. This governance is headed by an intellectual property Steering Committee which convenes on a quarterly basis and gathers top management representatives and internal stakeholders and ramifies deeply into operations. Commercial acquiring business – F.3.1.7 chargeback risk In order to mitigate this risk, the Group has put in place policies to manage merchant-related credit risk by establishing reserve accounts, requesting collateral and setting caps for monthly processing insurance coverage are also in place (further details in Section F.1.3 "Insurance" of this Universal Registration Document) to protect against such losses. Macro-economic changes and F.3.1.8 country risks To mitigate the risks related to macro-economic changes and country instability, the Group enlarges its worldwide presence, however, as some countries are more exposed than others to political or economic risks, the Group is focusing on “stable” and non-sanctioned countries. A country compliance process is in place in order to secure operations in identified risked zones. A compliance dashboard is periodically updated for each country by the Quality Security Risk & Compliance (QSRC) division and the Legal & Compliance department with the support of Risk, Finance, Insurance and Security departments to monitor the specific risks of each country regarding regulations and compliance matters. The Group makes also a periodic strategic operational review of its activities in order to fully revisit all options in respect of

portions of the business which would not have the critical size on their market, as well as activities considered as being non-core business.

Organizational structure risk F.3.1.9

Please refer to Section G.5.6.8 “Control Structure”.

Financial risks F.3.1.10 The Group proceeds to a specific review of its financial risks. The Group maintains a policy for managing its foreign exchange position if and to the extent it enters into commercial or financial transactions denominated in currencies that differ from the relevant local currencies. Pursuant to this policy, any material foreign exchange rate exposure must be hedged as soon as it occurs using various financial instruments, including, principally, spot and forward contracts and foreign currency swaps. As of December 31, 2019, the Group did not have any material foreign exchange rate exposure and did not have any such hedging instruments in place. In addition, the Group manages the credit risk by consistently selecting leading financial institutions as clients and by using several banking partners. Regarding credit risk in connection with its Commercial Acquiring, the Group monitors these risks by selecting financially sound clients, requesting guarantees (collateral build up, delegation of insurance, etc.) and checking daily transaction flows to avoid excessive exposure to these risks. Besides, the debt repayment schedule and the Group’s financial headroom is regularly monitored. Environmental challenges] Energy, carbon and electronic waste are the main environmental challenges for the Group. The Company is therefore conducting specific assessments and actions, in these areas of concern according to place of consumption and impact (offices, data centers, and terminals, travels) in order to reduce its environmental footprint. Please refer to Section D.5.2 for details. Regarding circular economy, Worldline SA/NV adopts an exemplary approach for electrical and electronic equipment regarding the production of its terminals all along the value process creation (collected, disassembled and recycled by certified companies). Please refer to Section D.5.2 “Concrete actions to reduce our environmental footprint” for further details. Environmental risks F.3.1.11 [extra-financial risks –

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Universal Registration Document 2019