The acquisition gives FFG a stronghold in the lucrative Philippines payment market, where JazzyPay has established early traction.
Venture tech capital firmFatfish Group (ASX:FFG)is staying busy on the M&A trail, with the announcement of a major new acquisition in the Asia fintech market.
The company announced this morning it will acquire JazzyPay, a Philippines-based payments provider, for US$1.57m ($2.1m).
The share-based deal will be completed by FFG subsidiary ASEAN Fintech Group (AFG), with the consideration to be satisfied entirely in ordinary AFG shares.
Fintech frontier
The deal forms part of the group’s strategic push into fast-growing Asian fintech markets, which are scaling rapidly through a combination of new technology and high-growth, high-population markets.
“TThe Philippines will become one of the top dynamic markets in the Southeast Asian region where FFG and AFG are present, alongside Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand,” FFG said.
With a population of more than 100m people, the Philippines processed estimated payment remittances from expatriates outside the country of more than US$30bn in 2021, according to data from the Philippines central bank.
Along with those strong macro trends, the acquisition of JazzyPay will also allow the group to drive synergies across its portfolio of other fintech companies including Betterpay.
JazzyPay will combine its service offering with Betterpay, which provides digital payment solutions to banks and other fintech firms such as Wise (formerly Transferwise).
“Further, the acquisition of JazzyPay will also facilitate the entry of other FFG fintech businesses into the Philippines,” FFG said.
With its latest deal, FFG is successfully executing on a multi-vertical approach across lucrative south-east Asian markets, with solutions in areas spanning Lending, Payments/Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), insurance technology (insurtech) and Wealth Management.
About JazzyPay
Established in 2018, JazzyPay was launched by two second-time founders (Mr Joshua Marindo and Ms Kathleen Acosta-Marindo), who were selected for the Techstars-Rakuten 2018 acceleration programme in Singapore.
The platform acts as a layered solution to simplify payments processing, buy enabling businesses to collect online payments via 27 different channels including debit/credit cards, online banking, digital wallets and simple cash deposits.
JazzyPay is a registered Operator of Payments System (OPS), regulated by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (The Philippines Central Bank), and a holder of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Level 1 Certificate.
To-date, the company has onboarded more than 500 merchants and processed over US$2.1m ($2.8m) of transactions.
Along with its in-house solutions for online payments and automated invoicing, JazzyPay also has partnerships with a number of commercial banks and digital processing providers in the Philippines market.
The company’s core focus is to “accelerate growth in businesses across industries by providing a unified digital payment solution that is efficient and easy to access”, FFG said.
Following the transaction, both Marindo and Acosta-Marindo will continue to lead the JazzyPay business and join AFG’s executive group to assist with its strategic fintech drive across south-east Asia.
The share-based deal will see AFG acquire 87.44% of JazzyPay, at a share price which gives AFG an indicative valuation of US$90m ($122m).
In light of the announcement, the carrying value of FFG’s 69.9% direct shareholding in AFG will be valued upwards to approximately US$84m ($111.8m).
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