VCs invest $16m in India's Ezetap
JS Capital Management has led a $16 million funding round for Indian mobile payment solutions provider Ezetap.
Existing investors Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Li Ka-Shing, and US-based Social Capital also contributed to the funding round, according to a release. JS Capital’s CIO Salil Seshadri will join Ezetap’s board. The company will use the new capital to improve and expand its digital payment platform while growing its customer base in India and overseas.
Founded in 2011, Ezetap’s initial product was mobile point of sale (MPOS) devices designed to be attached to smartphones, turning them into credit card readers. The technology allows small businesses, e-commerce companies, bill collectors and banking service providers to take payments in any location without a broadband internet connection.
In 2015 the company leveraged its MPOS business to launch a universal payments platform. The platform, which operates on a software-as-a service model, allows merchants to accept any digital transaction including physical cards, online payments and mobile wallets, using India’s government-backed Unified Payments Interface.
Ezetap claims to have been adopted by over 200,000 customers across India, with users including small businesses, large corporations and government agencies. The company processes $135 million in transactions every month, and expects to reach more than $400 million per month by 2018.
“We have been impressed by the number of technical, business, and operational challenges that Ezetap has solved en route to creating the model for how payments will be handled in the future,” said Jonathan Soros, founder and CEO of JS Capital. “Ezetap is democratizing payments in a country that is going digital at an unprecedented rate, but the impact of that transformation will be felt globally.”
Social Capital first invested in Ezetap in 2012, committing an undisclosed amount of Series A funding alongside PayPal’s Peter Thiel and others. The firm later joined Helion Advisors, Berggruen Holdings and American Express Ventures for an $8 million investment in 2014, with Horizons coming in with the existing investors for the company’s $23 million Series C round in 2015.
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