Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) has invested in GOJEK, a leading mobile on-demand service and payments platform in Southeast Asia. The amount of funds invested was left undisclosed.
Visa’s investment forms part of GOJEK’s ongoing Series F fundraising round. Series F fundraising is for later-stage financing and for established companies. Launched in 2011, as a ride hailing service, GOJEK has, over time, expanded to online payments via its platform Go Pay, which allows its users to make payments for a variety of services. The company intends to utilize this funding to accelerate GO Pay in SouthEast Asia.
Visa, being the world leader in the payment network processing space and with cutting-edge technology at its disposal, will also assist GOJEK in providing it with innovative payment solutions.
The collaboration with Visa will prove to be beneficial for GOJEK, which is facing fierce competition from Grab, another fintech startup with almost similar services in the same regions.
Also, Visa will get access to the vast payments market of the Southeast Asian region, which remains significantly underpenetrated with most of the transactions settled in cash. Given the fact that the usage of mobile phones with internet is quite high in this region, changing the mode of transaction will be easier. It will also create a huge customer base.
Visa is slated to release third-quarter fiscal 2019 earnings on Jul 23. The company’s earnings of $1.33 per share and revenues of $22.75 billion are expected to grow 10.8% and 8.7%, respectively.
Year to date, the stock has gained 35% compared with the industry’s growth of 42%.
Visa remains the frontrunner in the payments industry when it comes to innovation and technology, tie-ups and partnership for business growth.
These have driven its business volumes with payments volumes of $7.6 trillion achieved in 2018 compared with $3.8 trillion for Mastercard Inc. (NYSE:MA) , $1.1 trillion for American Express Co. (NYSE:AXP) and $159 billion for Discover Financial Services (NYSE:DFS) in the same space.
Visa carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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