Rothschild 11 Buys Into the Company That Routes Israel's Card Payments

Rothschild 11 Switching Partners, a Tel Aviv-based investment firm, has acquired a strategic stake in Automatic Bank Services Ltd, the company known in Israel by its Hebrew acronym Shva, the two companies announced on Monday. Shva operates the national infrastructure through which card payments are routed; the announcement carried a Jerusalem dateline of 24 March 2026.

Officials quoted in the announcement said the investment would support innovation, competition and better service for consumers while strengthening what they described as critical financial infrastructure. The investment firm said the move reflected confidence in the resilience of Israel's economy in wartime. Neither company disclosed the size of the stake.

What Shva actually is

Almost every Israeli card transaction passes through Shva without the cardholder ever hearing the name. The company describes itself on its own corporate page as a national infrastructure provider for cards issued by all of Israel's credit companies, and says it also runs the switching system that connects the country's cash machines. It was established in 1978, listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in 2019, and says it has no controlling shareholder, with 34.4% of its shares held by the public. It puts average daily turnover through its systems at more than one billion shekels.

In the joint announcement, Rothschild 11 managing partner Ishai Drori said Shva had shown it could keep delivering the service through wartime, and Shva chief executive Eitan Lev-Tov called the investment a vote of confidence in the company's role as operator of national payment systems. The release gave Shva's base as Holon, a city immediately south of Tel Aviv.

A monopoly at the centre of a competition push

Because a single company sits between merchants, acquirers and card issuers, Shva has long been a focus of Israeli competition policy. The Bank of Israel, which supervises the country's payment systems, has been steadily widening direct access to that plumbing so that non-bank firms can plug in without going through a bank. In January 2026 the central bank expanded the identification code used to connect to payment systems from two digits to three, according to an analysis by the Israeli law firm Barnea Jaffa Lande, removing a technical ceiling that had capped direct participants at roughly 99 entities and clearing the way for fintech firms and international payment providers to join.

That regulatory direction is the backdrop against which an investor buying into the incumbent operator promises "competition": the network itself is being opened to more participants, which changes both the risk and the opportunity attached to owning part of the switch.

What is still unclear

The announcement did not say what percentage of Shva was bought, from whom, or at what price. It did not say whether Rothschild 11 gains a board seat or any governance rights, and it set out no specific plans for the company beyond general references to innovation and service. It also did not indicate whether the transaction required approval from the Bank of Israel or the competition authority.