Fintech Startup The Mobile Wallet Acquires Trupay

Fintech startup The Mobile Wallet (TMW) has acquired Trupay at an undisclosed price. The acquisition will help The Mobile Wallet to strengthen its merchant acquisition business by allowing its merchant base to collect payments using new age mediums like UPI and BharatQR.

UPI is a real-time payments system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) that enables digital transactions between banks. Bharat QR is an integrated payment system that uses mobile phones to pay by debit or credit card by scanning a code at the merchant’s location.

Vinay Kalantri, Founder and Managing Director of The Mobile Wallet said, “We are thrilled to combine forces with Trupay. The merchant side payment acceptance infrastructure is lacking significantly in the country. With product suite of TMW and Trupay combined, we will be able to offer very cost effective asset lite payment acceptance solutions to merchants.”

According to Kalantri, the QR code technology has the potential to drive digital payments of the future and major use cases will be the small retailers like mom-and-pop stores and grocers.

Founded in 2015 by Kalantri, The Mobile Wallet offers a wallet linked prepaid card powered by Mastercard in association with RBL Bank. The customers can use TMW as either a mobile application, a physical prepaid card or a virtual prepaid card.

Customers can use these cards at more than 2 Mn point-of-sale (PoS) machines for e-commerce, recharge and utility bill payments.The Mobile Wallet has no publicly declared external funding. With the new product suite, it plans to achieve a merchant base of 1 Mn by the end of FY 2019.

Founded in 2015 by former Indian Oil Corporation employee Narendar Kumar, IIM-Calcutta alumnus Rahul Gochhwal and IIM-Bangalore graduate Vivek Lohcheb, Gurugram-based Trupay offers plug and payment solutions. Trupay is backed by M&S Partners Japan and Mumbai based venture capital firm Kae Capital.

It is is a Unique Payments Interface (UPI) and Bharat QR enabled payments platform for businesses across verticals. After registering on its platform, a merchant gets listed in its business directory on the app and customers can then pay him just by entering the mobile number.

Rahul Gochhwal, co-founder of Trupay said, “Trupay has always been a pioneer in payments technology; with UPI and Bharat QR solution now being added to TMW’s existing product suite, will be one of the most comprehensive merchant payment solution; a recipe which will witness hyper growth.”

In India’s fintech space, TMW competes with SoftBank-backed True Balance, Paytm, Mobikwik and Flipkart’s PhonePe, etc. In August 2016, PayPal launched PayPal.Me to enable easy cross-borders transactions for SMBs and freelancers working with overseas clients.

In its report “India’s Digital Leap: The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Opportunity” of September 2017, Morgan Stanley projected India’s digital payments penetration to increase from 5% today to 20%, and the e-commerce market to reach $200 Bn, with 475 Mn ecommerce shoppers, adding up to a GDP upwards of $6 Tn — all by 2027. As per Inc42 DataLabs report, the Indian fintech industry received $3.01 Bn funding across 111 deals in 2017.

In the growing digital environment of UPI and QR based payments, how the collaboration of fintech startups, Trupay and The Mobile Wallet, fares remains to be seen.

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