Visa Invests In India’s BillDesk

To deepen its commitment to digital payments in India, Visa has made a minority investment in bill and online payment platform BillDesk. The deal is still subject to statutory approvals, and the company doesn’t believe that it will have a direct bearing on its existing business in the country, Visa said in an announcement on Friday (Nov. 16).

Visa Asia-Pacific Regional President Chris Clark said in the announcement, “As a leading payments player in India, BillDesk has been a longtime business partner to Visa. Having worked with BillDesk’s founders over the years, the Visa leadership has been consistently impressed with their vision, market knowledge and execution capabilities, as well as alignment on values. This investment further reinforces our long-term commitment to India’s digital payments growth story.”

The investment and collaboration from Visa will help BillDesk create new products for loyalty and payments, while allowing the company to grow its footprint. In the announcement, BillDesk Co-founder MN Srinivasu said, “We now look forward to building new products and solutions that benefit merchants as well as consumers. Visa, with its deep network and strong relationships, is a great partner as well, looking to offer our services in other markets.”

Visa noted that BillDesk is among the company’s many investments and partnerships with innovators in emerging payments around the world. The company has invested in companies such as Marqeta, Payworks and Paidy, among other firms.

The news comes as BillDesk and Visa said in September that they had successfully enabled 50 large service providers for a payments acceptance platform called Bharat QR. In an announcement at the time, the companies said the achievement, which occurred in a month, brought the digital payment facility to potentially more than 300 million consumers. Some of the merchants enabled include ACT Broadband, Reliance Energy, Tata AIG, Gujarat Gas, MTNL, Aircel, Tata Power, Pune Municipal Corporation and Calcutta Electric Supply, according to the companies at the time.