Global emcommerce giant Amazon has joined the list of prospective buyers interested in the digital wallet FreeCharge. The online ecommerce company has reportedly offered $ 70 – $ 80 million for FreeCharge, which is owned by the troubled ecommerce company Snapdeal.
Amazon made the offer to Jasper Infotech, which owns and operates both Snapdeal and FreeCharge with a signed termsheet last week. They have also recently invested about $30 million in their Indian digital payments entity, Amazon Pay India. With this acquisition, Amazon will be able to strengthen their hold in the digital payments market space. MobiKwik, Paytm, Bank of Baroda along with Times Internet have shown interest in buying the digital payments and wallet arm.
Axis Bank also made an offer of $60 – $ 65 million a couple of weeks back, emerging as the front runner for the acquisition. The Economic Times reported, rival online payments service Paytm also had signed a non exclusive termsheet and made a $ 10 million offer for the acquisition of FreeCharge. But, according to the report, Axis Bank remains the favorite to acquire the digital payments platform, despite Amazon’s higher bid.
Jasper Infotech invested $ 3.38 million in the digital wallet in May this year, prior to which Snapdeal had also made an investment of $ 20 million in March. But talks about the acquisition of FreeCharge have been doing rounds for over six months now. American online payments system PayPal was also reportedly planning to acquire a significant stake in FreeCharge, before the news of Flipkart acquiring rival Snapdeal surfaced. Since then, there have been multiple prospective bids for Freecharge and Snapdeal’s logistics arm Vulcan Express.
The future of Jasper Infotech owned Snapdeal is also unclear with reports claiming the founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal have been in talks with other senior executives looking for alternative options.