Citrus Pay, an India-based mobile payment technology producer backed by e-commerce firms eContext Asia and Beenos Asia, will be acquired by payments services provider PayU Corporate for $130m in cash, DealCurry reported today.
PayU is a subsidiary of media group Naspers. The news follows reports last month that Naspers was seeking to purchase Citrus Pay directly for $150m to $180m.
Beenos and eContext had invested a total of $32m in Citrus Pay and jointly owned approximately 50% of the company. Venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Ascent Capital had provided a total of $25m and held between 25% and 30% between them.
Founded in 2011, Citrus Pay operates two core products: a mobile wallet that lets users transfer money and request it from others, and a payment gateway service for merchants to accept and process online payments.
The company’s offerings will be rebranded as PayU products. Naspers hopes to use the acquisition to bolster its payment division, boost its range of financial services and expand into new markets.
Jitendra Gupta, co-founder of Citrus Pay, will take a position in PayU’s lending platform Lazyday. Amrish Rau, currently managing director of Citrus Pay, will become chief executive of PayU in India.
The transaction is slated to close by the end of 2016, and Naspers is expected to provide beteween $30m and $40m of funding to Citrus Pay in the next few months. Nitin Gupta, co-founder of PayU, will help transition the Citrus Pay team before stepping down to focus on his own startup.