E-commerce marketplace ShopClues.com, which in January raised close to $100 million, is reportedly in advanced talks to buy mobile payments firm Momoe Technologies.
Bengaluru-based Momoe, which was founded in April 2014 by Utkarsh Biradar, Karthik Vaidyanathan, Ganesh Balakrishnan, Neelesh Bam and Aiman Ashraf, most of them IIT and IIM graduates, provides payment solutions for offline merchants and allows customers to make digital payments using the app on their phones.
The development is seen as ShopClues’ move to add a payment service to its shopping platform, which will strengthen its payment network for merchants on its platform and will further integrate it with its hyperlocal commerce business.
The all-stock deal could value Momoe at anywhere between $8 million and $15 million (67-80 crore).
In February last year, Momoe had raised $1.2 million from IDG Ventures India, Jungle Ventures and India Quotient. It currently has around 4,000 merchants on its platform.
ShopClues’ interest in buying a payment solution, comes in the wake of several e-commerce companies either investing or acquiring payment processing platforms to decrease its dependency on third party players for its platform.
