Mumbai-based mobile point-of-sale (PoS) services provider Mswipe Technologies Pvt. Ltd has acquired the offline merchant PoS division of digital payments firm PayU India, a company statement said.
As part of the deal, Mswipe will merge PayU’s existing offline PoS division team into its existing operations and workforce.
“This bilateral alliance will also allow the merchant base of Mswipe to benefit from the various Internet payment services offered by PayU India. Furthermore, PayU's merchants will have access to Mswipe for their entire POS services-related requirement,” the statement said.
According to Mswipe, 80% of its merchant base comprises small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and many of them can move to online payments through PayU's payment gateway. This association will also help both businesses acquire new merchants and gain wider acceptance across categories as a payment option.
In September 2016, Naspers-owned payments gateway PayU India acquired Mumbai-based Citrus Pay for $130 million in the largest ever cash deal in fintech space. While PayU has more than 300,000 merchants on its network, out of which 80% are SMEs, majority of the company’s revenues comes from large enterprises.
In an interaction earlier this year with VCCircle, Shailaz Nag, co-founder and chief operating officer at PayU, said that the company was keen on entering the offline payments space through PoS machines, but deferred the move as it wanted to focus on mobile-based offline features.
PayU claims it is clocking gross merchandise value (GMV) of $1 billion every month.
“We are laser focused on the online space and continue to increase our market share through new fintech products and innovation. This partnership allows us to focus on our core of enabling digital payments across more brands and merchants across the country,” PayU chief executive, Amrish Rau said. PayU claims it covers nearly 60% of the entire e-commerce and processes over Rs 40,000 crore of digital payments in India annually.
Set up in March 2011, Mswipe is backed by Matrix Partners and Axis Bank. The company is also reportedly in talks with Ratan Tata's RNT Capital Advisors and International Finance Corp for its next fund raise.
