ItzCash Gets Ebix To Picks Up 80% For Rs 800 Cr

The US-based Ebix Inc., has picked up an 80 per cent stake in ItzCash -- part of the $2.4 billion Essel group -- for Rs 800 crore which values the country’s largest pre-paid instrument (PPI) player at Rs 1,000 crore.

ItzCash’s platform connects 75 million consumers and 1,500-plus corporate partners and plays off a network of over 75,000 retail outlets. Volumes have topped $2 billion (Rs 14,000 crore) on a card-base of 110 million; the average ticket size of transactions ranges between Rs 1,200 and Rs 1,500. Of its 110 million base, about 35 million are “very active”, but since the November 8th demonitisation drive by the Narendra Modi government, it’s up at 45 million; so too monthly transactions at six million, up from 4.5 million.

Says Naveen Surya, Managing Director-ItzCash said he was “thrilled to be associated with a world-leading exchange like Ebix and the opportunities the new investment in ItzCash offers us”.

ItzCash partners Visa, MastrerCard, RuPay, HDFC Bank, Kotak Bank and RBL Bank. It works closely with Amway, DishTV, Flipkart, BookMyShow, Uber, OYO Rooms, IRCTC, Satin MicroFinance and more, helping them acquire net new customers by making products available at the middle of the pyramid.

Taking Flight
The decade-old ItzCash has grown from being the first and largest non-bank entity to offer prepaid cash cards to a payments solutions company – at the retail, corporate, and government level. About three years ago, ItzCash integrated its system and retail network in Mumbai to target Reliance Energy’s customers. It plugged a gap as until then most of the Reliance Energy customers used to settle bills by cash at limited collection counters, which were operational only during working days and at specific working hours.

In December 2016, ItzCash said it was open to a strategic partner as the firm felt it was in a sweet spot after the demonitisation drive and the stress on a shift to plastic and digital modes of payment. The need for fresh capital was to tap the opportunities on offer in the cash-less space and a rollout of point-of-sale machines across its franchise network. There was also talk on an initial public offering of shares by ItzCash during the period which would have made it the first pure-play payments player to do so.

The PPI world got a boost in during the demonitisation phase. In November, the Reserve Bank of India allowed merchants to transfer funds (from PPIs) to their own-linked bank accounts up to ? 50,000 per month, without any limit per transaction. It also upped the limit of semi-closed PPIs Rs 20,000 from Rs 10,000 which included reloads too.