South Africa headquartered global payments solutions and transaction processing company Net1 UEPS Technologies Inc has announced a strategic partnership with digital wallet player MobiKwik.
Net1 will invest $40 million in MobiKwik and will integrate its Virtual Card technology with the MobiKwik wallet as part of the subscription agreement.
The tie-up provides an entry point to Net1 into the fast growing digital payments market in India. Integrating the Virtual Card technology on its platform will eliminate the need to tie-up with retailers for MobiKwik, providing easier acceptance across multiple use cases.
“We are excited to partner with one of India’s most utilized and recognized digital platforms, through which we can introduce our products and services. Many of our solutions, most notably UEPS/EMV, are tailor-made to provide multiple financial and other services, increase accessibility, eliminate fraud and reduce cash,” said Sergei Belamant, Chairman and CEO of Net1 in a statement.
Founded in 2009, wallet player MobiKwik competes with Alibaba backed Paytm and Snapdeal’s payments arm FreeCharge in the online wallet space. In its recent round of funding in May, MobiKwik had raised $ 50 million led by Japan’s payment gateway GMO and Taiwan based semi-conductor company, MediaTek.
“We greatly value our partnership with Net1 and look forward to learning from their best practices in serving the un-banked and under-banked users, while taking progressive steps towards making India a cashless economy,” said Upasana Taku, Co-Founder of MobiKwik. The company currently has a user base of 32 million and is focused on driving its offline business to drive half of its revenues by 2017.
The listed entity Net1 is a provider of Universal Electronic Payment System (UEPS) which facilitates biometrically secure real-time electronic transaction processing to unbanked populations online and offline. Net1 is a leading payment processor in South Africa and Republic of Korea and offers VISA and MasterCard issuing services in China, APAC territories, Europe and Africa.
Net1’s India entry will mark a new contender in the digital payments market which is set to grow to a $500 billion opportunity by 2020, according to a Google-BCG Study.
Source: The Economic Times
