Heading for an IPO, Mobikwik reports a profit in its payment gateway business

• Mobikwik, a digital payments company, has said that its payment gateway business has turned profitable.
• With an IPO in mind, the company is now aiming for a ₹1.4 lakh crore annual payment volume from the payment gateway business.
• Earlier in July, Mobikwik had reported a funding of ₹8.67 crores.

Mobikwik, one of India’s leading digital payments companies, has claimed that its payment gateways vertical had turned profitable since April 2019.

“Our focus on building the best tech stack for our merchants is evident in the growth and success of our Payment Gateway business. Our product and user experience (UX) philosophy is to keep the user experience simple and ultra fast. Payment Gateway is one of our fastest growing verticals and will play an instrumental role in our path to profitability,” said Upasana Taku, Co-Founder, MobiKwik.

With this, the payments company now aims to ₹1.4 lakh crore annual payment volume for its payment gateway business. As a payment gateway, Mobikwik finds clients in businesses like Uber, IRCTC, Dream11, Bajaj Finance, Zomato, Grofers, Blue Dart, Delhivery, Dominos, Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, etc. “Over 94 million unique cards are saved on MobiKwik PG platform; this includes 20 million credit cards which is 50% of all credit cards issued in India,” said the company’s official statement.

In July, the company had also announced a new round of funding of ₹8.67 crore from Trifecta Capital and NDTV. Its previous investors include Sequoia Capital and American Express among others.

According to reports, Mobikwik is also planning to head for an IPO in the next three years. "We are looking for an investor who will help the company go for an initial public offering (IPO) in three years," co-founder and chief executive Bipin Preet Singh told ET.

Mobikwik finds competition from the likes of Paytm, PayU and Razorpay in the payment gateway business. Paytm claims to hold over 50% of the market share and has said that it does 400 million transactions per month; is five times more than its next competitor.

A report by Credit Suisse Group AG says that the Indian digital payments market will increase five-fold from the current $200 billion to $1 trillion by the year 2023. This has also resulted in many international players eyeing the Indian market like Osama Bedier's Poynt. Bedier is also credited to be the creator of the Google Wallet.

In June 2019, Mobikwik had also partnered with DT One, a global B2B network for mobile recharge, giving its users the opportunity to recharge their phones in 150 countries. MobiKwik’s competitor in India, Paytm had already entered two international markets – Canada and Japan.