ICICI Bank Acquires 8.85% Stake In Avenues Payment

ICICI Bank has reportedly acquired a 8.85% stake in Mumbai-based Avenues Payment India Private Limited. The move aims at promoting adoption of digital cross border remittance platforms for corporate and retail customers.

The deal size is said to be $1.3 Mn (INR 10 Cr) and is expected to get complete by the end of October this year. The bank does not require regulatory approval since the acquisition of shareholding is less than 10%.

Avenues Payments India was incorporated in 2012 by Vishwas Patel and Hershel Asmani.

According to the official website, the startup which is backed by ecommerce service provider Avenues India, is aimed at providing remittance assistance to customers from both Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (828) market segments, all around the globe.

The platform reportedly has a turnover of $166K (INR 12 Mn) and is currently present in India, United Kingdom and Australia.

ICICI, the 24-year-old private sector bank has been taking several steps to make its way up into the fintech sector in India. This includes:

• May 2018: Introduced Innovation Centres to lookout for innovative ideas that entrepreneurs are coming out with
• Acquired a 9.9% equity in FingPay, which enables merchant onboarding by using eKYC, PAN, and IMPS verification.
• Picked up 19.9% in Arteria, which provides supply chain solutions and payment integration services
• May 2017: Launched Money2India (M2I) – its global payments platform in India

India’s digital payments market is set to touch $1 Tn by 2023, as suggested by Principal Adviser to Niti Aayog Ratan P Watal at the launch of Niti Aayog report — ‘Digital Payments – Trends, Issues and Opportunities.

Here, according to InstaRem CEO Prajit Nanu, the cross-border remittance market in India is around $6-7 Bn annually.

Founded in 2014, InstaReM is licensed as a Money Services Business (MSB) in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Malaysia, India, Canada and the USA.

Paypal, and Paytm are two big players who are looking to make big in this segment. While Paypal is innovating further on its existing infrastructure, Paytm is still testing waters.

Also, California-based Remitware Payments (Remitr) is set to launch a blockchain based operating system, MoneyOS for global payments. The new OS aims to ease the crossborder/global payments by freeing up the current complexities.

[The development was reported by ET]