Visa and Temasek invest over Rs 600 Cr in BillDesk

Online payments solutions company BillDesk has raised over Rs 600 crore from US-based payment firm Visa while Temasek Holding through Claymore Investments also participated in the round.

The development comes three months after media reports suggested that Visa will take a minority stake in the Mumbai-based company. The valuation of the 18-year-old company could be estimated at around $1.8-1.9 billion.

According to RoC filing sourced from paper.vc, Visa has put in Rs 537.06 crore for 2.46 lakhs equity share at a price of Rs 21,832.04 each. On the other hand, Billdesk received Rs 65.5 crore in lieu of 30,000 equity shares at the same rate from Claymore Investments.

The deal was however expected to be around $300 million as it was poised to get $200 million as primary investment whereas a secondary purchase of shares from existing investors and founders for $80-100 million was also speculated.

Billdesk was reportedly in talks with payment giants like PayPal and American Express in search of a potential buyer as its PE investors seek the exit.

A property of IndiaIdeas, Billdesk was founded by M.N. Srinivasu, Karthik Ganapathy, and Ajay Kaushal. The company provides payment solutions for customers in e-commerce, financial services, retail, and other sectors.

For the uninitiated, BillDesk is a financially independent company and is monitored as a participant under the Payments and Settlements Systems Act, 2007 that is regulated and supervised by the RBI.

Last year, the company was asked to change its business model with the arrival of NPCI and its Bharat BillPay System. Now, all payments aggregators will have to be part of Bill Pay and obtain a license from RBI.

One of the few profitable firms, BillDesk processes over $60 billion in payments annually and competes with PayU, CCAvenue, Razorpay, and Pine Labs.

For the Financial year ended on March 31, 2018, BillDesk posted Rs 148.89 crore as net profit as compared to Rs 137.9 crore in FY17. Meanwhile, the company's revenue also increased by 21.5 per cent to Rs 1,154.62 in FY18.

Overall, this is a bold step from Visa to invest in India at a time when it's facing the heat of data localisation norms and tax demands from the Indian government. Visa along with Mastercard and American Express have been asked to pay around 15 per cent tax on their income in the country.

The foreign payments firm are also losing the marketshare on Indian turf.  Last year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that UPI and Rupay's marketshare has reached 65 per cent of the payments done through debit and credit cards.