Russia’s LifePay acquires iboxPro

• Acquisition marks entry into Asian mPOS market
• LifePay Global to process US$4 million of transactions a month

LIFEPAY, Russia's largest mPOS service, has acquired iboxPro, one of Asia’s leading mPOS services. It will use iboxPro as a base to build the top mPOS company in South-East Asia.

In a statement, LifePay said it would merge with iboxPro to create a new company, LifePay Global, which will have its headquarters in Singapore.

LifePay Global services will be available in four countries: Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Russia. The company officially launched yesterday in London, at the Finovate Fintech conference.

With an excess of 20,000 customers and 50,000 active mPOS readers in use, LifePay Global is set to process US$4 million of transactions per month. The company partners with TechComBank (one of the largest banks in Vietnam) and national payment system BankNet.

In Indonesia, the company collaborates with Mayapada – a member of Indonesia’s largest financial and trade group.

In Russia, LifePay Global works with the country’s top-tier banks – Probiznesbank, Binbank and VTB24.

By the end of 2015, LifePay Global plans to increase the amount of processed transactions to US$40 million per month and enter the Chinese and Philippine markets. The expected growth will make LifePay Global the strongest player in the South-East Asian mPOS market by 2017.

With the area’s absence of major network mPOS players and only a small number of mPOS projects, LifePay’s expansion into South-East Asia and China is a logical move. These locations have a large number of small and medium businesses (mPOS’s target customers) and a large number of issued credit cards with a rather weak card-acquiring infrastructure.

Currently, LifePay Global’s product and technology line includes, Chip&PIN and Chip&Sign readers along with an ecosystem of software and hardware business solutions and services.

In the second quarter of 2015, LifePay Global plans to launch a number of new services including pre-order service for HoReCa, online loans, online acquiring and a digital wallet.

The principal shareholder of LifePay is international venture capital firm Life.SREDA.

“The reason for our attention to mPOS projects is the fact that today they are the fastest-growing. That is quite understandable: They have one of the lowest CPAs and the highest customer base growth rate. From big data and new products upsell / cross sell point of view they get simultaneous growth on both small/medium business and customer sides.

“No other financial technology demonstrates such growth speed, low customer acquisition cost and upsell capabilities.

“Our choice of partners for entering South-East Asian market was dictated not only by their area of operation, growth rate, quality of customer base and product development but also by the experience of people working in that company. iboxPro has a strong multinational and international team, with team members living and working for a long time in region’s various countries,” said Vladislav Solodkiy, chairman of LifePay Global, in a statement.

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