Finch Capital’s Nomu Pay Acquires Key Wirecard APAC Entities

  • Payments
  • 16.04.2021 08:55 am

Finch Capital, through Nomu Pay, has today reached an agreement to acquire Wirecard Payment entities in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. 

The transactions are expected to be completed in May 2021 for Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong, and for the Philippines later in the year. In March 2021, Nomu Pay announced plans to acquire Wirecard Turkey. Details on Management, Strategy and Rebranding will be provided at closing.

This investment is part of Nomu Pay’s larger plan to build out a leading unified payment company in high growth customer segments in EMEA and Asia. Following these deals, Nomu Pay will be active in five countries, with access to markets of 300 million people and a GDP equal to that of India.

Radboud Vlaar, Managing Partner Finch Capital, comments: “As a pan-European and pan-Asian firm we are bullish on the growth in these regions and have reserved significant capital to invest in them through Nomu Pay. Acquiring Wirecard APAC’s key entities provides us with access and infrastructure to invest in improving the payments landscape for millions of people.”

Nomu Pay’s interest in Wirecard subsidiaries in Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Philippines is the unique opportunity to deliver unified payments services to these markets: 

  • Hong Kong is the main financial center of the region, and through Wirecard, Nomu Pay can deliver payment services to clients in this regional and financial hub. Merchant acquiring is currently not regulated in HK and there are local (principal) memberships in place with the largest card schemes.

  • Thailand is a fast growing market, and this is a unique opportunity to deliver payments services there with an E-Payment service license from the Bank of Thailand.

  • Malaysia is a fully operational regional hub for delivering payment services in the region, and Wirecard Malaysia is a principal member of Visa & Mastercard and registered merchant acquirer under supervision of local central bank.

  • Wirecard Philippines has a payment license, EMI license and local (principal) memberships with the major card schemes. In the Philippines both payment and e-money services are included, so we can offer payment issuing, acquiring and wallet services to local businesses.

Hans de Back, Managing Partner at Finch Capital, comments: “The Covid-19 outbreak has drastically accelerated Southeast Asia's shift to a cashless world, with unprecedented growth in the number of e-payment transactions. With this acquisition we hope to play a substantial role in the next frontier of the region’s payments infrastructure.”

About Finch Capital

Founded in 2013, Finch Capital’s mission is to fund and support the entrepreneurs creating products that shape the future of finance. Finch Capital’s team of 12 investment professionals are entrepreneurs (e.g. Adyen, Deliveroo, Deepmind) and investors (e.g. Accel, Atomico, Egeria) with deep industry backgrounds (e.g. Facebook, Google and McKinsey&Co), located across offices in Amsterdam, London and Jakarta. Its track record includes AccountsIQ, Aylien, BUX, Brytlyt, Fixico, Fouthline, Goodlord, Grab, Hiber, ScalingFunds, Twisto and ZOPA. Finch Capital produces original research including the State of European Fintech and the Fintech sector post Covid-19. For more information see www.finchcapital.com.

About Nomu Pay

Nomu Pay is a newly established company that through its subsidiaries will provide state of the art unified payment solutions to help its clients accelerate growth in large high growth countries in Asia, Turkey and the Middle East region. NOMU Pay is funded by Finch Capital, a leading European and South East Asian Financial Technology investor.

About WireCard Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand

Wirecard ‘APAC’ was started in 2017, when Wirecard acquired Citi Bank’s acquiring portfolio and prepaid card services business in the region in 11 countries. Wirecard Asia provides financial institutions and regional merchants in Asia Pacific with a wide variety of payment and issuing processing as well as fraud management solutions. Catering to the specific needs of regional merchants across a broad spectrum of industries, we are connected to major financial institutions and local payment schemes in Asia Pacific, and hold issuing and acquiring licenses from major payment and card networks. We provide both business customers and consumers with a constantly expanding ecosystem of real-time value services built around innovative digital payments using an integrated B2B2C approach. 

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