EBS, which is the second largest payment provider in India after CCAvenues, got acquired today by Ogone Payment Services, an European company.
EBS has been a relatively new entrant to the market but has since become the second largest payment provider. EBS provides multiple acquiring banks for providing payment gateway services to offer Mastercard, Visa etc on a single platform.
Ogone Payment Services is one of the main European service providers specialised in the processing of online payments, with more than 30.000 customers in 45 countries. The company provides a range of electronic payment solutions covering a number of areas, including e-commerce, ticketing, call centres or the hotel industry.
While the amount of the acquisition is not known, this is a good pointer to the fact that payment services are supposed to take off in India – especially in the domain of mobile payments.
Also with the rapid growth of Ecommerce, payment gateways are supposed to get more traction. To quote Mr. Peter De Caluwe, CEO of Ogone Payment Services “Only 8.4% of the Indian market is currently online but this translates to 100 million users, which makes it the fourth largest online country in the world and this is set to grow rapidly with online travel accounting for 80% of the commerce in India. Acquiring a leading company such as EBS represents a huge potential for us and our European merchants.”
How do you think this market is going to shape up after this acquisition? Do you think it was a good decision to get acquired at this juncture (when they have 20% market share) and the market is set to explode?
