Mobile wallet Oxigen Services in talks with UK investors to raise $70 mn

Oxigen is now creating more use-cases for its platform so that it can showcase these to investors

Mobile wallet Oxigen Services is in talks with investment funds in the United Kingdom to raise about $70 million.

In the past year, the company saw a lot of changes in the business model after it planned to move away from expanding its mobile wallet alone. The company is now creating more use-cases for its platform so that it can showcase these to investors.

“We are in talks with a few investors in the UK to raise around $70 million,” said Ankur Saxena, vice-chairman and CEO, Oxigen Group. “We are now getting into corporate expense management, making universities cashless as well as working with transport companies for cashless plying of trucks and commercial vehicles. These are different new use-cases we have on the platform.” Oxigen also provides financial services via micro-ATMs.

The mobile wallet announced the launch of a pre-paid debit card-based expense management solution, in collaboration with RuPay and RBL Bank. It has tied up with 15 companies and is now in talks with global conglomerates to increase its adoption. “Oxigen aims to provide this solution to SMEs and large corporates, offering them services such as food, fuel, mobile, LTA, books and periodicals, rewards and recognition disbursement; travel advance and salary disbursement, among other things,” the company said.

The company hopes to gain the first-mover advantage in the corporate billing, reimbursements and payments segment, which industry analysts say is worth $20 billion. “We hope to get over three million users of our corporate card over three years. We hope to generate revenues of around $3.5 billion during this time,” added Saxena. 

Last year, the company said it would concentrate on adding customers in Tier-II and Tier-III cities. With changes in its business model, the company got into tie-ups such as one with Adarsh Credit Co-operative Society, under which Oxigen deployed micro ATMs for Adarsh Credit’s advisors, for branchless banking and financial services.

The wallet major is also a National Business Correspondent to SBI and RBL Bank. It also claims to have 150 million customers and a retail footprint of 200,000 outlets. Oxigen claims to have processed over six billion transactions.

Playing a different game

* Oxigen’s Payment Processing Services is provided via Micro ATM

* By 2020, it aims to deploy 200,000 such point of sale machines

* 200,000: Number of merchants on the platform

* 20,000:Number of banking correspondents