Visa is in final stages to acquire a stake in Nigeria’s Interswitch, in a deal that will make the pan-African payments company Africa’s real unicorn after a failed bid by Jumia.
Sources close speaking to Sky News claim Visa say the firm is spending around $200m for a 20 percent stake in the company before its proposed London IPO.
Interswitch is digitising payments in Nigeria and other countries in Africa through technology integration, advisory services, payment infrastructure and transaction processing across multiple channels to organisations across various sectors, including but not limited to: aviation, government, health, education, banking, retail, telecommunications, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) and small-medium enterprises (SMEs).
Founded in 2001 and currently present in various countries across Africa, Interswitch recently launched globally connecting Nigerians and several Africans to commercial banks, financial institutions, merchants, six international payment schemes among others.
According to the report by Sky News, Visa is in final stages to invest $200m in Interswitch in return for a 20% stake in a deal that makes Visa a cornerstone investor in Interswitch ahead of its prospective initial public offering in London during the first half of 2020.
The deal also gives Visa access to Interswitch’s biggest domestic debit card scheme in Africa, with more than 19 million cards active on its network.
Early this month, Interswitch announced it had acquired e-Clat Healthcare Limited, a Nigeria-based health technology company to improve healthcare delivery in Africa.
The two firms said the deal was completed on September 30, 2019, and saw Interswitch acquire a 60% stake in e-Clat through the purchase of shares from current shareholders and subscription to new shares issued by the company.
According to Mitchell Elegbe, Founder and Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Interswitch: “Our acquisition of e-Clat demonstrates strong progress along this strategy and alignment with our corporate vision. At the core of Interswitch’s expansion into healthcare is our ambition to provide customers with greater access to healthcare across different interaction points beyond hospitals, such as at pharmacies and primary health care facilities, providing much-needed services to patients across Nigeria and, in the future, in Africa.
With the acquisition, Interswitch’s products, such as our Verve Health cards, as well as its payment collection & disbursement solutions (Quickteller for business), will be used to drive much-needed efficiency in payments for health services across the value chain.
e-Clat’s healthcare technology platform has an electronic billing, immunization, ante-natal and care pathway functions, as well as a variety of additional specialist modules and is used in over 250 public and private healthcare facilities in Africa’s most populous nation.
The combined product offerings of Interswitch and e-Clat are expected to, amongst other things, enable operators in the healthcare sector to develop new capabilities, improve the efficiency of their core operations and facilitate seamless payments. These also mean more products and more coverage for Interswtich hence more revenues and more impact. The acquisition is also a payment consolidation move by the pan-African payments firm.
Snapping up e-Clat, coupled with the growing adoption of Interswitch’s healthcare product offerings by healthcare operators in Nigeria means Interswitch’s healthcare technology platform will become one of the top industry platforms in Nigeria, which can be utilised as a major data source by healthcare policy makers for planning and efficiency improvements in the sector.
As a result of this acquisition, the combined healthcare technology solutions are expected to position the Interswitch group as a health-tech solution and payments provider of choice to the healthcare industry going forward.
