Established in 2000, BillDesk primarily offers payment aggregation services that help merchants and other entities in getting payments from their customers across various digital payment methods
Competition Commission of India has cleared PayU's $4.7bn acquisition of BillDesk. (Credit: PROSUS)
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved Dutch payment service provider PayU’s previously announced $4.7bn acquisition of Indian digital payments provider IndiaIdeas.com Limited (BillDesk).
The deal was announced in August 2021. Its closing was subject to approval from the CCI among other conditions.
In a tweet, the CCI stated: “Commission approves acquisition of 100% of the equity share capital of IndiaIdeas.com (BillDesk) by PayU Payments.”
Founded in 2000, BillDesk mainly offers payment aggregation services that help merchants and other entities in getting payments from their customers across multiple digital payment methods.
Apart from its payments platform, the Indian firm also offers customer engagement and loyalty solutions.
Alongside PayU India, the Indian unit of PayU, BillDesk is expected to meet the changing payments requirements of digital consumers, merchants as well as government enterprises in India.
PayU is the payments and fintech business of Prosus, a consumer internet group based in The Netherlands. The former has three businesses that include payments for domestic and cross border transactions, credit solutions for small businesses and consumers, and strategic investments in innovative fintech firms.
The deal marks PayU’s fourth acquisition in India. The Dutch firm had earlier acquired Citrus Pay, PaySense, and Wibmo.
With the acquisition of BillDesk, PayU expects to become one of the world’s top online payment providers in terms of total payment volume (TPV).
At the time of announcing the deal, Prosus stated that PayU India and BillDesk are expected to build a financial ecosystem that will handle four billion transactions per year. The volume is said to be four times the level of PayU in India as of 31 August 2021.