The deal brings together complementary functionalities and the opportunity to forge an integrated exchange to process financial, insurance and healthcare transactions for India’s 1.3B population

ItzCash, a digital payments services company owned and operated by Mumbai-based Essel Group, has secured US$120 million in funding from Ebix , a US-based company that provides on-demand software and e-commerce services to the insurance, financial, e-governance and healthcare industries, in return for 80 per cent equity.

Ebix will pay US$76 million upfront and the remaining US$44 million over a period of three years.

The deal values ItzCash at approximately US$150 million.

As per a statement, this acquisition brings together complementary functionalities and the opportunity to forge an integrated exchange to process financial, insurance and healthcare transactions for India’s 1.3 billion population.

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“With the youngest tech-savvy society, the largest middle class, a 1.3 billion population, a country committed to going digital and a growth rate of 7 per cent plus, India is an emerging economic superpower today. We are big believers in the power of exchanges and thus have been keen to take an early position in India in terms of powering financial and insurance exchanges,” said Ebix Chairman, President and CEO Robin Raina.

“We believe that the synergies between Ebix and ItzCash are at multiple levels and the ItzCash exchange when complemented with Ebix’s portfolio of insurance & healthcare services along with our international scale, will set the foundations of a very powerful and scalable business opportunity,” he added.

ItzCash Managing Director Naveen Surya, said: “Having established our leadership across payments, remittances and corporate solutions already, we will deepen our foray now in the areas of credit, insurance, healthcare. We will continue to invest in our distribution network and technology, providing a fully integrated Financial Services Exchange.”

“Ebix’s global reach and operations opens international expansion opportunities for ItzCash. We are keen to replicate our proven model, technology platform and operating experience to other emerging markets for financial services” added Surya.

Established in 2006, ItzCash is a digital payments firm catering to the retail, government, campus and corporate sectors. ItzCash retail offerings include shopping, utility bill payment, travel bookings, cinema bookings, prepaid gift cards, money remittance, insurance premium payment, property tax payment, DTH cable and satellite and mobile payments. Its corporate offerings are gifting, cash management, purchasing, travel bookings, incentives & awards, payroll & expense, government benefits and a wide variety of solutions for the campus, health and club sector.

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ItzCash claims it connects 75-plus million consumers and 1,500-plus corporate partners. With a distribution network of 75,000-plus physical retail outlets, ItzCash processes approximately 600,000 transactions per day and approximately US$2 billion in annual payment volume. It claims to be serving 35 million consumers annually in 3,000-plus cities and towns.

Over the past five months, ItzCash has deployed 25,000 point of sale (PoS) machines across India, with plans to deploy 100,000 more in the near future.

Ebix provides on-demand solutions ranging from infrastructure exchanges, front-end & back-end enterprise systems, outsourced administrative & custom software development solutions, and risk compliance solutions for various entities involved in these industries. With 40-plus offices across Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, the US and the UK, Ebix powers multiple exchanges across the world in the field of life, annuity, health and property & casualty insurance.

Through its various SaaS-based software platforms, Ebix employs hundreds of domain specific business and technology professionals to provide products, support and consultancy to thousands of customers on six continents.

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