Bangalore based mobile point of sale (PoS) payments startup Ezetap has raised an undisclosed amount of investment from American Express in return for a minority stake in the company, reports The Economic Times. This seems to be a strategic investment for Ezetap. Co-founder Abhijit Bose says this will allow them to enable additional value added services like loyalty points and rewards for consumers. Sanjay Swamy, Managing partner of AngelPrime (which incubated Ezetap) says this investment will also allow Ezetap to expand to other geographies. Last month, Ezetap had secured $8 million investment in Series B funding led by Helion Advisors with participation from existing investors Chamath Palihapitiya’s The Social+Capital Partnership and Berggruen Holdings. The company had then stated plans of using the investment to strengthen its presence in Asia & Africa and deploying 100,000 PoS devices over the next year. It has currently deployed 12,000 PoS devices across South East Asia and Africa. The company has raised a total $11.5 million until now, including the $3.5 million investment from The Social+Capital Partnership, Peter Thiel, Nicolas Berggruen & David Sacks in November 2012. It's worth noting that American Express's investment arm American Express Ventures had also invested $4.5 million in the Bangalore-based customer engagement company Capillary Technologies last month. Citibank Tie-up: In January last year, Ezetap had partnered with Citibank to launch a mobile payment solution for merchants targeting credit and debit card holders in India. It had also partnered Kenya’s largest bank Equity Bank and MasterCard to expand operations to Kenya in March 2013. Ezetap is currently one among several Square-like mobile PoS solution providers in India. The solution comprises a card reader, mobile app and a platform that…
