PayU acquires California-based digital payments company Wibmo for $70M

Naspers-owned PayU has acquired California-based  digital payment security and mobile payment technology company Wibmo for $ 70 million. With the acquisition, PayU, which offers digital payments for online merchant transactions, will own the entire set of digital transaction security solutions by Wibmo.

Aakash Moondhra, CFO of PayU Global, said the company will be able to add value to the entire ecosystem including banks, consumers and merchants with the combined offerings.

He added,

"We will partner with leading banks to enable digital banking, merchants will gain with higher conversions rates and increased sales, and consumers will have a frictionless experience in completing digital payments transactions.”

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Wibmo partners and integrates with banks in over 20 countries to offer payment authentication and risk-based decisioning across billions of online and mobile payment transactions.

PayU and Wibmo will be able to together work with merchants and financial institutions to offer targeted payment solutions leveraging data from hundreds of millions of Indian consumers annually. This will also help PayU accelerate its credit business by leveraging big data to power credit on various online and offline merchants in partnership with leading lending players.

Govind Setlur, Founder and CEO of Wibmo added,

"By combining our track record and expertise in payment security and mobile payments with PayU’s strong merchant network and heritage in payments, the combined entity will be focussed on delivering more secure and seamless payments experience to its customers.” 

As part of the deal, Wibmo and PayU businesses will continue to run separately. However, both teams will work together to build unique business solutions from the platforms. Govind will become part of PayU’s leadership team, reporting to PayU India CEO, according to a statement. Avendus Capital was the sole advisor to this deal.

Wibmo will continue to operate and serve all of its clients as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Naspers’ PayU under the leadership of Govind. The statement adds that this takes PayU’s fintech investment total past the $500 million mark, putting the company within the top five global fintech investors over the last two years.

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