BENGALURU| MUMBAI: Naspers-owned digital payments major PayU has held discussions to acquire MobiKwik’s payment gateway business, valuing it around $45-50 million and signalling consolidation efforts in the hyper competitive sector, two people in the know of the matter told ET.Other strategic and financial investors are also in talks to buy the fintech firm’s payment business, the persons said. MobiKwik is fighting a broader battle against deep-pocketed rivals such as Paytm, Flipkart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay in a highly competitive digital payments sector. Its payment gateway subsidiary, Zaakpay, has been looking for fresh funding for a fairly long time, having held discussions with potential investors, people in the know said.A lack of investor interest may have been the reason why MobiKwik decided to put its payment business on the block, said one of the sources.As a part of the payment gateway business, MobiKwik processes card transactions for merchants and earns a commission per transaction. “In the mobile wallet space, MobiKwik lost market share to bigger rival Paytm. Then, with the emergence of Unified Payments Interface players like Google Pay and PhonePe, its share further declined, thereby causing a dent to its consumer payments business,” a top executive at a digital payments company said on the condition of anonymity.

Source: Economic Times October 22, 2019 03:00 UTC