Wirecard Buys Southeast Asian Payments Business

Wirecard, the German payments firm, said Tuesday (Oct. 27) that it will buy the payments business of the Great Indian Retail Group, which is based in and serves southeast Asia through electronic payments and eCommerce. The purchase price is $254 million in cash and bank loans, according to Reuters.

Through the deal, the German firm will garner 60 percent of the shares of GI Technology, which is part of the Great Indian Retail Group and which issues and maintains prepaid cash cards, mobile wallets and remittance technology. That prepaid unit serves what Reuters reports is hundreds of thousands of Indians without bank accounts, giving them the option to use cash online. Those cards can also be “topped off” at a variety of locations, including banks and retail outlets.

[bctt tweet=”The purchase price paid by Wirecard is $254 million in cash and bank loans.”]

Through the buyout, Wirecard gets access to brands such as iCashcard, StarGlobal, Commerce Payment and Smartshop.

In terms of financials, Reuters reported that the businesses that Wirecard is buying are projected to log EBITDA of as much as €7 million this year, jumping to €18 million after integration costs are completed. The combined company is slated to report sales of as much as €45 million this year, which should jump to €75 million next year, the newswire reported. In other news affecting Wirecard, the company had been rumored in the financial trade press to be “in the running” to buy Worldpay, a United Kingdom-based payments processing company. That latter outfit opted instead to bring common shares public, even amid a spate of offers from other firms this past summer, with a London debut that brought the Worldpay market cap to as much as $7.5 billion. That listing became the largest one seen on the London Stock Exchange in 2015 (so far).

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