VeriFone is on a bit of an acquisition spree. After purchasing payments software developer Global Bay, the payments company is acquiring European e-payments giant Point for $820 million. The acquisition is expected to close at the end of 2011. VeriFone will also assume $230 million worth of debt from Point, making the the total transaction volume over $1 billion.

Point, which was sold by private equity group Nordic Capital, is Northern Europe’s largest provider of payment and gateway services for retailers and merchants. Point installations handle 10 million transactions per day, and customers include some of the largest retail companies in Europe, as well as small independent stores and online merchants.

The company’s technology includes point-of-sale technology and support, gateway services, card encryption services, and multi-channel e-commerce processing. Point has more than 800 employees and a local presence in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden and the UK. Currently, Point has 475, 000 merchant contracts.

VeriFone plans to expand the Point platform throughout the region and beyond, with the aim of creating the world’s largest infrastructure for rapid deployment of alternative payments.

Douglas G. Bergeron, VeriFone CEO said of the acquisition “Our vision is to offer retailers everywhere a managed service to easily accept all existing payment types, including the evolving alternative and mobile payment methods being offered by Google, PayPal, Groupon, Isis, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. At the same time, we can increasingly offer the new payment entrants easy and accelerated access to our worldwide installation of more than 20 million merchant lanes.”