Bangalore based point of sale (PoS) company Ezetap has acquired FortunePay, which offers banks a platform that allows them to give a mix of digital payments solutions as well well as physical payment solutions, reports ETtech.
Abhijit Bose, CEO of Ezetap, told the publication that FortunePay would provide it with infrastructure to become a single payment solution for merchants. Ezetap currently serves clients such as Airtel, BigBasket and Urban Ladder among others.
This is Ezetap’s second acquisition: Back in June 2014, Ezetap had acquired the Hyderabad-based loyalty platform Clinknow which enables merchants create and offer real-time offers to their customers based on their transaction history.
Funding
In 2015, the company raised Rs 150 crores in Series C funding from Social+Capital, Helion Advisors, and Berggruen Holdings, Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm for Li Ka-Shing, and the Capricorn Investment Group. Ezetap had previously secured an undisclosed amount of funding from American Express in return for a minority stake in March 2014. In February 2014, the company had raised $8 million as Series B funding from Helion Advisors, with participation from existing investors Chamath Palihapitiya’s The Social+Capital Partnership and Berggruen Holdings. Incubated by early stage investment fund AngelPrime, Ezetap had earlier raised $3.5 million from The Social+Capital Partnership, Peter Thiel, Nicolas Berggruen & David Sacks.
Earlier developments at Ezetap
-In October 2015, Ezetap allowed universal mobile wallet acceptance on its platform, which will allow in-person transactions at home or at store. Ezetap brought on board Paytm, Mobikwik, Freecharge, and Novopay for the same. However, in 2016, Paytm has cut off all mobile wallet aggregators and goes directly to merchants.
–Tie up with SBI: The State Bank of India had partnered with Ezetap in June 2014, to deploy 500,000 PoS terminals across the country in the next five years. Ezetap had claimed that it was the largest mobile Point-of-Sale (mPOS) deployment in India to date. Subsequently in October 2014, Ezetap and SBI partnered up to launch ‘Chota ATM’, a solution that could double as an ATM device as well as a PoS terminal that accepts payments from any debit and credit card. Targeted at neighborhood Kirana shops, the solution was offered to merchants for a non-refundable deposit of Rs 499 along with a monthly fee of Rs 150 and a commission of Rs 5 per cash-back transaction.
-Citibank tie up: In January 2013, Ezetap partnered with Citibank to launch a mobile payment solution for merchants targeting credit and debit card holders in India. As part of the partnership, merchants were expected to receive real time information during the payment and collection process when customers transacted using Ezetap. Citibank had then claimed to have partnered with companies like Shoppers Stop, Bajaj Allianz, Flipkart, BookMyShow and Vodafone to deploy this solution for payment and collection.
