Payu to buy Billdesk for $4.7 bn

Prosus-backed fintech firm Payu is set to acquire India’s earliest payment gateway Billdesk in an all-cash transaction of $4.7 billion. This will be the largest acquisition in India’s digital payments space. The deal will also give an exit to investors General Atlantic, TA Associates, Temasek, Clearstone Ventures, and Visa.

The proposed acquisition will help Payu, the payments and fintech business of Prosus, which operates in more than 20 markets, become one of the leading online payment providers globally by total payment volume (TPV). The combined entity will have a total of 4 billion transactions annually.

Prosus, the global consumer internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world, said in a filing that the value of the net assets that are part of the acquisition was $256.9 million (around ~1,927.5 crore), and the profit after tax for the year ended March 31, 2021 was $36.8 million (around ~270 crore).

The latest deal is happening when the Indian payments segment is seeing huge traction.

According to the FY21 annual report of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the number of