Malaysia-based online payment service provider, iPay88 Sdn Bhd is now a subsidiary of NTT Data Corporation. NTT DATA is a Japanese system integration company headquartered in Japan, part of NTT Group, the third largest telecommunications company in the world in terms of revenue.
The acquisition that was sealed on 4th September 2015 by NTT DATA, via its subsidiary NTT DATA Asia Pte. Ltd. (NDAP).
Set up in 2006 and headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, iPay88 has established its presence regionally in countries in Southeast Asia including Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam.
The three iPay88 co-founders – Chan Kok Long, Lim Kok Hing and Chong Lee Kean, express confidently that the joining as part of NTT DATA represents a major milestone to iPay88.
“Immediately, the four markets that iPay88 will be focusing on rolling out new and revolutionary online payment solutions together with NTT DATA are Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam,” says Chan, Executive Director of iPay88.
Lim, who is also iPay88 Executive Director says that “Being part of NTT DATA Group’s family will provide a platform for us to reach out to larger corporations while at the same time increase iPay88 brand awareness across Asia Pacific as we can expect to invite more global merchants to join iPay88’s online payment solutions through NTT DATA’s global customer base.”
Chan says that with NTT DATA’s experience in vast payment are from Consumer Payments to Bank-to-Bank Payments, iPay88 will benefit by having access to some of the cutting edge ICT discoveries for online payment solutions.
“iPay88 will benefit from streamlining our existing and evolving online payment solutions with NTT DATA’s payment related solutions represented by CAFIS® – which is the largest Card Payment network in Japan,” he says, adding that NTT DATA has achieved yearly revenue of over 11 billion USD and 70,000 employees worldwide.
Masahiro Kawai, Head of Cards & Payments Services Division of NTT DATA says, “Overall for us, we aim to cover uncharted areas in order to support customers’ entries into the global market and provide services to overseas markets with growth potential. In addition to this global market coverage, the partnership will also help our customers vertically from backend infrastructure services to front end merchant service.”
“I see that the biggest benefit from the acquisition of iPay88 is that we are now squarely positioned in the online payment and to strengthen the Payment Service Provider business both for online and offline within the region.”
Kawai further explains, “One of the objectives of the acquisition is to capitalise on growing demand for cross-border online payments between its home market and other markets in the Asia-Pacific region.”
“Today, electronic commerce in the Asia-Pacific region is one of the fastest growing markets that provide attractive growth potential to the online payment service and payment solution providers. Furthermore, the growing demand for cross-border online payment businesses between Japan and Asia-Pacific region including Malaysia, is expected to accelerate increasingly.”
With this acquisition, NTT DATA said it is expecting to co-create a number of leading-edge competitive electric payment services, more innovative products and services development, as well as merchant acquisitions within Malaysia and Singapore, thereafter Thailand and Vietnam.
For iPay88, there will be renewed business development efforts to accelerate the uptake of mobile point-of-sale (mPoS) systems to capture card present transactions as value-added services – especially in markets with strong government support for cashless societies, it said.
Chan ends, “iPay88 is growing at the rate of double digits year-on-year. We expect to maintain this growth rate over the next three years in view of the impending competitions from new players; and that there will be no significant change in the overall corporate strategy and market direction even after this acquisition by NTT DATA.”