Visa lands two deals to bolster digital wallet plans

Visa Inc. (V) has made another pair of moves in its quest to develop a mobile network for financial transactions and maintain its leader position in the nascent medium. The company announced today that it has acquired Fundamo Ltd., an enterprise mobile financial services platform with strengths in developing markets, and struck a new long-term agreement with Monitise plc, which provides mobile money and payment services in more developed countries.
The investments come on the heels of Visa’s plans to launch a digital wallet initiative this fall, which it announced last month. Visa is positioning the Fundamo acquisition and Monitise partnership as the next logical step toward delivering various mobile financial services and payments capabilities across a wide spectrum of uses, geographies and mobile platforms.
Privately-held Fundamo, which is based in Cape Town, South Africa, will give Visa’s platform the ability to deliver those services to consumers without bank accounts across Africa, Asia and Latin America. The company has more than 50 mobile financial services deployments across more than 40 countries. Fundamo has more than five million registered subscribers today. Visa is acquiring the company for $110 million in cash and the transaction is expected to close today.


”Combining Visa’s unparalleled network scale, global reach, extensive product suite and established financial institution relationships with Fundamo’s expertise in delivering mobile financial services in developing economies presents us with an important long-term opportunity to grow our business and drive financial inclusion in key geographic markets,” Joseph Saunders, chairman and CEO of Visa, said in a prepared statement.