Industry giant PLDT Inc.’s Voyager Innovations, the developer of the PayMaya mobile wallet, has lured some of the world’s biggest investment funds and technology players in a soon-to-be-finalized deal.
Sources with knowledge of the matter told the Inquirer that apart from Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings, which developed the massive messaging, social media and digital payments app WeChat, investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) and the World Bank’s investment arm International Finance Corp. (IFC) will take a stake in Voyager.
Once the deal is completed, the new investors will own a combined majority stake in Voyager, which was established five years ago and whose platforms are focused on the financial technology space. The PLDT Group will retain a significant minority stake, PLDT chair and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan said in August, when he first announced that sale talks had progressed.
The interest comes as big technology players like Tencent are expanding outside their home markets to invest in Southeast Asia. Tencent and KKR are also investors in Indonesian ride-sharing giant Go-Jek, which is seeking to widen its footprint in the region, including the Philippines.
Last year, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Financial, which developed Alipay, took a stake in Globe Fintech Innovations Inc., which runs the GCash mobile wallet, a rival of PayMaya in the Philippines.
The Philippines has more than 100 million people, most of whom do not have a bank account. However, high mobile penetration and its relatively young population make the country an attractive market for digital payments and gaming platforms, where Tencent has a significant presence.
Pangilinan said in August that PLDT had invested more than P10 billion in Voyager since 2013. But he noted that profitability remained elusive despite the exponential growth of those using its platforms, which also include online loan application service Lendr and Freenet (an app that allows users to access certain websites without paying any data charges). Over the last two years, PLDT has been selling noncore assets such as most of its stake in Germany’s Rocket Internet and its remaining shares in Manila Electric Co., the country’s biggest electricity retailer.
Funds will be used to support a capital expenditure program of about P180 billion over the next three years. PLDT had said most of the spending would be used to bolster its wireless and fixed-line networks.