Visa denies Fundamo shut down, some operations to move to Bangalore

Visa denies that it is about to shutdown Fundamo, the mobile payments company it bought for US$110-million in cash five years ago.

That’s contrary to what a number of Memeburn sources have said, with some reporting that key senior staff had left the company to work elsewhere or found their own ventures in recent months.

In answer to Memeburn inquiries, Visa said that it was “keeping the Cape Town office open” and that both Fundamo and Africa are “still incredibly important for Visa”.

The payments giant did however confirm that it will be moving some of Fundamo’s operations to Bangalore, India where it has opened a new technology centre.

“We don’t envision any job losses as a result of this,” the company told Memeburn.

Founded in 1999, Fundamo is one of the great success stories of the South African technology space. During its operation as a privately held company, it attracted investment from the likes of Cape Town venture capitalists and emerging market investment group PoweredByVC (since rebranded as Knife Capital), investment company Remgro and financial services corporate Sanlam.

The company was responsible for developing what it claims was the world’s first mobile financial service in a developing economy with Celpay Zambia in 2002. Since then, it has continued to focus on emerging market mobile money solutions.

At the time of its acquisition, Fundamo had more than 50 active mobile financial services deployments across 40 countries, including 27 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. It also had a base of more than five million registered subscribers, but Visa said there was “potential to reach more than 180-million consumers”. Currently Fundamo claims that its platform is operational in more than 34 countries.

The company has been quiet over the past couple of years, with no major technological announcements for some time. In fact, the most recent entry on its online news hub comes from April 2013.

It hasn’t really been in the headlines of late either, with the last real coverage concerning the retirement of its founder Hannes van Rensburg.

Van Rensburg left Visa in late 2014, after being appointed head of the payment giant’s Sub-Saharan Africa division in mid 2012.

According to his LinkedIn profile, van Resnburg is currently on sabbatical “reading and writing, while trying to learn Mandarin”. It also says, he’s “reflecting on what I have learned in the thirteen year journey to create the leading mobile payments company,” in reference to Fundamo.