Mobile wallet firm MobiKwik has raised $40 million from South Africa’s payments major Net1, marking the close of its series C round earlier announced in May, as strategic players start to get active in the domestic payments market. TOI had reported in its May 3 edition that MobiKwik had picked up $10-12 million from Japan’s GMO payments gateway — which is part of GMO Internet – and Taiwanese semi-conductor firm Mediatek. We reported at the time that the Gurgaon-based startup was still in talks with investors to extend the fund-raise. In total, the company has raised $50 million as part of this round, company co-founder Upasana Taku told TOI . This amount is still less than what the company had initially aspired for — $100 million. In fact, Taku had told TOI in May that she was confident of closing the round with a planned target of $80-100 million. Several local startups are struggling to raise fresh cash as the funding exuberance of last year has waned, paving the way for a cautious approach from investors. With Net1 as an investor, MobiKwik plans to offer virtual cards to consumers as it aims to push more transactions in the offline space. At present, it claims to have about 32 million users with over 5 lakh transactions a day, out of which 25% transactions are from offline merchants.
