Uvik Technologies Private Limited, developer of proprietary contactless technology ‘UPoS’, strikes a Merger and Acquisition (M&A) deal with Infibeam Avenues Ltd, a listed fintech & digital payment company for Rs 75 crore in cash and stock deal.
This acquisition has been closed and as per the deal, Uvik’s investor, a US-based VC firm — Season Two Ventures, headed by former UST Global’s CEO Sajan Pillai, will be getting an exit.
“M&A with Infibeam is a strategic step for Uvik towards its next growth story. The focus of offline payments in the next few years is going to be via contactless infrastructure. To achieve this objective, we, at Uvik, have been constantly working towards making payments easy-to-use for merchants with focus on security. The M&A deal with Infibeam is going to help us drive the next level of growth for Uvik through Infibeam’s world-wide presence and merchant acquiring capabilities,” said Rahul Hirve, CEO and Co-founder, Uvik Technologies Private Ltd.
With the onset of COVID pandemic, contactless payments have been rising at a massive rate. To address this huge demand in the market, Uvik decided to develop its proprietary technology that can help any merchant accept card payments on their mobile phone. After months of hard work and intense R&D, Uvik created its SoftPOS solution – UPoS and got it certified by Visa, MasterCard and Rupay for ticket size < Rs 5000 and > Rs 5000. Uvik is the only payments platform in India with a pin-on-glass certification.
Importantly, with Visa, MasterCard and NPCI being aggressive in their plans to drive contactless payments, SoftPOS is expected to become bigger and better. Additionally, with POS and MPOS devices having challenges like infra and setup costs, distribution and others, contactless payments can provide an attractive alternative to retailers.
“Payments ecosystem has been rapidly evolving over the past few years through demand-driven influences and regulatory-driven pushes. UPI, BNPL, tokenization and checkout flows have ushered in a new trend in payments. Contactless Payments is going to be the next big driver in payments with focus on making payments cashless, contactless, riskless and seamless,” said Amartya Singh, Co-founder, Uvik Technologies Private Ltd.
Uvik has a 25+ member team led by Rahul Hirve, CEO and Co-founder, and Amartya Singh, Co-founder. Rahul, an alumnus from IISc Bangalore, has 17+ years of experience at firms like Ezeetap, Western Digital & MPhasiS. Amartya, an alumnus from IIM Bangalore and NIT Rourkela, has 12+ years of experience at firms like Cashfree, KPMG and Samsung.
