Wirecard sells its payment gateway platform to WOW digital technologies
Disgraced payments company Wirecard was in the news last year for all the wrong reasons when filed for bankruptcy after its €1.9 billion cash went missing. It sold its operations worldwide one by one starting with Wirecard UK which was sold to Railsbank then Paynetics acquired Wirecard UK and Ireland assets. Later in 2020, Banco Santander acquired Wirecard assets.
This week, Wirecard’s administrators signed an agreement with WOW digital technologies to sell its payment gateway platform and card management solution business units in the Asia Pacific as noted in the press release. The transaction is subject to closing conditions and following the closure of this deal, the payment gateway platform will be managed by Bankograph Pte Limited which is a processing partner of WOW digital technologies.
“We have structured this deal in the best interests of all stakeholders, particularly to ensure continuity of services for our payment gateway customers in the Asia Pacific,” said Nick Gronow, Director at Wirecard.
As noted in the press release, Bankograph is a technology company that operates its digital banking platform and has offices in Vietnam, Singapore and India. The company offers POS payments and credit management solutions to FIs. WOW digital technologies is an IT products and software development partner of Bankograph.
As per the press note, Wirecrad’s payment gateway business supports large financial institutions in Singapore, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Australia while its card management solution business unit provides software products for financial institutions in Malaysia, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia to issue and manage cards and merchant relationships.
Under the partnership agreement include the transfer of software assets such as Wirecard’s TeleMoney payment gateway, Wirecard Card Management System and Wirecard Application Processing Engine for paperless Know-Your-Customer (KYC) system and onboarding of merchants.
It also noted that in order to smooth transition and to ‘minimize disruption of services’ Wirecard will also transfer to Bankograph all staff from the business units sold and data centre infrastructure assets in Singapore, excluding the data warehouse. Wirecard will continue to operate the businesses during the period of integration into the business units of WOW Digital Technologies and Bankograph.
“We want to make this transition as seamless as possible and enable financial institutions to provide world-class services to their merchants beyond the current pandemic”, said Alexander Gold, CEO Bankograph.
Wirecard in the press note states that the business units included in this transaction include assets from ‘Wirecard Singapore, Wirecard Asia Holding, Wirecard Payment Solutions Malaysia and Wirecard Myanmar’. It also noted that ‘assets acquired from Citibank in 2017 do not fall within this sale’.