Naspers-Owned Global Fintech Firm PayU Enters Southeast Asia With Red Dot Payment Acquisition
We all know Naspers, the most valuable company in Africa – with a market cap of USD 75.4 Bn. The South African firm owns a global fintech firm known as PayU, an initiative that specializes in emerging markets. The startup has entered the Southeast Asian market by acquiring a controlling stake in Singapore-based Red Dot Payment.
How much was involved in the buy remains an inside knowledge, but eight-year-old Red Dot has been valued at USD 65 Mn as a result of the deal.
Naspers’ PayU has plans to harness the potential of the Singaporean company – founded by finance professionals and offering payment gateway, e-commerce storefronts and online invoicing – to tap the market share of the region’s 60 million consumers and meteorically rising internet penetration.
Sometimes referred to as the PayPal of the developing world, PayU, around this time last year, acquired Zooz, an Israeli startup that provides an API to merchants that lets them accept a variety of payments depending on the market. The investment brought the company’s total spend on such deals, including acquisitions, to USD 350 Mn.
A Google-Temasek study shows that Southeast Asia is one of the fastest-growing digital payments markets in the world, and expectations are that it will triple in size to USD 240 Bn in total payments volume by 2025.
Across the region’s six largest countries, there are 350 million internet users, a number that blows that of America out of the water by a wave and presents an immense business potential for global merchants.
Red Dot was founded in 2011 by experts from Fortune 500 companies, and the payments solution has mushroomed into Singapore’s best-known home-grown and trusted fintech startup.
The company has made this mark by delivering innovative, secure, and customized payment solutions for all enterprise sizes across the region.
It remains unclear precisely how much Red Dot has been able to raise since its inception, but, reportedly, it received USD 5.2 Mn in its Series B round. What we are sure of are its backers, which include Japanese GMO, Wavemaker, the co-founder of Skype (Toivo Annus) and MDI Ventures.
“We are proud of how far we have come and that PayU, a leading global Fintech operator and investor, recognizes the strength, depth, and breadth of the company that we have built with unwavering dedication over the past eight years,” said Randy Tan. The company also said that they are pleased for Red Dot to be a part of Naspers’ portfolio companies.
PayU which also has ambitions to be in Japan and Korea is taking the wheel of Red Dot in a bid to tap into the growing Southeast Asian market since it already has a presence in India – where it’s worth USD 2.5 Bn.
According to its CEO, Laurent le Moal (featured image), PayU believes in retaining teams and empowering them through transactions, rather than the mere acquisition of an asset.
“This investment is PayU’s first step towards expansion in the SEA region. We will now provide our existing global merchants access to Southeast Asia with a single API integration, thus strengthening our global PayU Hub platform”, he said.
