- 5-year strategic partnership marks a new era in the world of commerce

NEW DELHI, PARIS, and SINGAPORE, March 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- BharatPe, one of India's fastest-growing Fintech companies and Ingenico, a Worldline brand, today announced a five-year strategic partnership that will help fuel the adoption of POS devices in India. As a part of the partnership, Ingenico will roll out 100,000 of its Axium range of Android Smart POS and PPaaS (Ingenico's Payments Platform as a Service) to BharatPe's merchant network in India over the next 12 months.

The combination of Axium DX8000 Android-based terminals and PPaaS brings BharatPe, the Delhi-based unicorn, a technology stack that is designed to address the needs of a fast-growing and evolving market. Built as per the latest industry norms and using the Android 10 operating system, the large user interface on the Axium terminal makes it ideally suited to BharatPe's merchants.

As the No.3 private POS player in India and one that is constantly innovating with new services, BharatPe, with Ingenico's PPaaS solution, will have the flexibility to bring its innovative business applications to the market in the shortest span of time. PPaaS is a suite of payment and commerce services that combines solutions for managing terminals with third-party applications and alternative payment methods. The cloud-based platform works with any payment device beyond the 35 million Ingenico POS already deployed in 170 countries around the world and for online commerce.

For Ingenico, this partnership is the opportunity to reinforce its presence in the high-potential Indian market as well as positioning Ingenico as an ecosystem enabler empowering commerce across all channels, simplifying payments and delivering innovative customer journeys.

Speaking of the partnership at the India FinTech Expo in Delhi where he is a keynote speaker, Nigel Lee, Ingenico's Senior Vice President for Asia Pacific said: "We are delighted to accompany BharatPe's growth trajectory in India, a strategic market for Ingenico. This partnership is a huge opportunity for Ingenico, to support BharatPe and to extend the range of services it can bring to merchants. In addition, Ingenico's mission for PPaaS is to help its partners manage the different services they make available to their merchants simply and efficiently in a way that is far quicker and easier than other technologies currently allow. We are proud to enable BharatPe to do just that and to support them along their extraordinary growth journey."

Speaking on the partnership, Shashvat Nakrani, Co-Founder, BharatPe, said, "We have scripted one of the fastest scale-ups in the POS industry in India since we launched BharatSwipe in 2020. Today, our PoS business is active in 250+ cities and we have deployed more than 1.25 lac (125,000) BharatSwipe machines across offline shops. Also, we are processing US$ 4 bn in annualized transaction processing value on our PoS devices currently. With this strategic partnership with Ingenico, we will be able to add a new dimension to our range of Fintech offerings for offline merchants. The new Axium POS machines coupled with PPaaS will enable us to offer world-class payment and commerce services to our merchant partners and further empower them to grow their business. We will continue to explore strategic partnerships with renowned players across industries so as to offer best-in-class Fintech products and services to our millions of merchant partners."

ABOUT WORLDLINE

Worldline [Euronext: WLN] is a global leader in the payments industry and the technology partner of choice for merchants, banks and acquirers. Powered by 20,000 employees in more than 50 countries, Worldline provides its clients with sustainable, trusted and innovative solutions fostering their growth. Services offered by Worldline include instore and online commercial acquiring, highly secure payment transaction processing and numerous digital services. In 2021, Worldline generated a proforma revenue close to 4 billion euros. 

ABOUT BHARATPE

BharatPe was founded in 2018 with the vision of making financial inclusion a reality for Indian merchants. In 2018, BharatPe launched India's first UPI interoperable QR code, the first zero MDR payment acceptance service. In 2020, post-Covid, BharatPe also launched India's only zero MDR card acceptance terminals – BharatSwipe. Currently serving over 80 lakh merchants across 150+ cities, the company is a leader in UPI offline transactions, processing 11 crores+ UPI transactions per month (annualized Transaction Processed Value of US$ 16+ Bn in payments). The company has already facilitated disbursement of loans totalling to over INR 3000 crores to over 300,000 merchants, since launch. BharatPe's POS business processes payments of over US$ 4 bn annually on its POS machines. It has a network of 1.25 lac+ machines across cities. BharatPe has raised over US$ 650 million in equity and debt, till date. The company's list of marquee investors includes Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Steadfast Capital, Coatue Management, Ribbit Capital, Insight Partners, Steadview Capital, Beenext, Amplo and Sequoia Capital. In June 2021, the company announced the acquisition of PAYBACK India, the country's largest multi-brand loyalty program company with 100 million+ members. In June 2021, it was also given an in-principle approval by Reserve Bank of India to establish a Small Finance Bank, in partnership with Centrum Financial Services Limited (Centrum), the established and profitable NBFC arm of the Centrum Group. In October 2021, the consortium of Centrum Financial Services Limited (Centrum) and BharatPe, was issued a Small Finance Bank (SFB) license by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). BharatPe also made its grand entry in the Buy Now Pay Later segment with the launch of postpe in October 2021.