Paytm acquires savings start-up Balance Technology
India’s Paytm is powering on in the payments space with the acquisition of Bengaluru-based savings management start-up Balance Technology.
Financial details were not disclosed
Financial details were not disclosed because that would have been helpful and insightful. Instead, Paytm rolls out the usual words that waste everyone’s time.
Madhur Deora, chief financial officer and SVP, Paytm, says Balance has “created a fantastic product with real user engagement”.
Currently Balance offers automated products. For example, it has a conversational personal savings assistant that “nudges users to build a saving habit”.
Ankit Kumar, Balance’s CEO and co-founder, adds: “We look forward to bringing in computational intelligence, unique design and proprietary algorithms with Balance to help Paytm users accomplish more with their money.”
According to Paytm, the six-member Balance team has joined its product and design teams and is working on its user/merchant interfaces.
Last year, fintech fund Rainmatter invested $233,000 in Balance. The start-up used the money for hiring and marketing.
Cogs
While Balance has a small team, the acquisition is part of Paytm’s bigger plans. The latter is building things up and progressing well in the fintech space.
Last month, the titanic trio of SoftBank, Yahoo Japan and Paytm ganged up to unveil PayPay – a smartphone payment service using barcodes. It’s coming in autumn this year.
In April, SoftBank said it was investing $400 million in Paytm E-Commerce, in a funding round that valued the firm at about $1.9 billion.
