On June 12, Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK) has reached an agreement to acquire 100% of Kadmos Holding GmbH (Kadmos), a global end-to-end maritime salary payments platform provider headquartered in Germany.

Founded in 2021 and based in Berlin and London, Kadmos is a rapidly growing technology company that provides innovative salary payment solutions to shipowners, ship-management companies, and their global workforce of seafarers.

In 2019, NYK established MarCoPay Inc. (“MarCoPay”) in Manila, Philippines, as a financial services platform. MarCoPay has since evolved to offer loans and insurance designed to support the well-being of Filipino seafarers and their families. It services shipowners and ship-management companies employing Filipino seafarers, and has solidified its market position as the only digital-salary payments provider for Filipino seafarers with an electronic money issuer license from Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the central bank of the Philippines.

The acquisition of Kadmos enables NYK to integrate a platform that supports seafarers of all nationalities into its digital payments business portfolio. Together, Kadmos and MarCoPay will uniquely provide comprehensive salary payment solutions to seafarers worldwide while also addressing the unique needs of the Filipino seafarer community.

NYK aims to further enhance collaboration between the two entities by unifying their platforms to create the world’s leading digital-salary payments provider for seafarers of all nationalities. Additionally, NYK will play a pivotal role in driving market-wide adoption of the joint products and advancing the overall well-being of the maritime industry’s essential workforce.

Kadmos CEO Sasha Makarovych
The Kadmos team is thrilled to partner with NYK and begin collaborating with MarCoPay, an ideal partner for Kadmos to expand our global reach and scale our joint payments services. We are confident that MarCoPay’s local expertise in the Philippines and Kadmos’ global coverage will result in the best product in the market, delivering an exceptional salary payment experience to seafarers and their employers.

Kadmos Co-Founder Justus Schmueser
We believe all our stakeholders will benefit immensely from Kadmos becoming part of NYK. Using NYK’s hundred-plus years of experience, we can complement our innovative edge with the enduring sense of trust that NYK commands.

NYK Senior Managing Executive Officer Nobuhiro Kashima
We are very pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement to acquire Kadmos, a promising fintech company headquartered in Germany. Leveraging the experience and expertise of MarcoPay, which started in the Philippines, we aim to quickly expand the scope of services in collaboration with Kadmos, driving further growth in our seafarers' e-money business.
As a manifestation of our mission of "Bringing value to life," we are committed to enhancing the living standards of international seafarers, who are our closest colleagues working at sea. We will prioritize safety, security, and trust in our efforts to provide a valuable e-money service platform for seafarers.

NYK Group Europe President and CEO Carl-Johan Hagman
We welcome the Kadmos team to NYK. We look forward to accelerating the exciting Kadmos journey and hope the entrepreneurial and ingenious Kadmos staff will contribute to developing NYK culture across our Group.

Kadmos Holding GmbH
Headquarters: Berlin, Germany
Establishment: 2021
Co-Founders: Justus Schmueser and Sasha Makarovych
Website: https://www.kadmos.io/

On March 10, 2023, the NYK Group released its medium-term management plan “Sail Green, Drive Transformations 2026 — A Passion for Planetary Wellbeing.” The NYK Group is promoting growth strategies with ESG at the core, based on the Group’s mission statement of “Bringing value to life” and a new corporate vision for 2030, which reads, “we go beyond the scope of a comprehensive global logistics enterprise to co-create value required for the future by advancing our core business and growing new ones.”