Greenergy to acquire major stake in ABS-CBN fintech firm

MANILA, Philippines — Greenergy Holdings Inc. (GHI) is taking a majority stake in a joint venture fintech company between ABS-CBN Corp. and iBayad Online Ventures Inc.

GHI, the listed holding company of agri-entrepreneur Antonio Tiu, will acquire 51 million fully paid common shares of U-Pay Digital Technologies Inc. from ABS-CBN for P54 million.

The transaction will result in Greenergy owning 51 percent of the outstanding capital stock of U-Pay.

“Under the term sheet, the execution of the definitive agreements is conditioned on a satisfactory legal, financial and environmental, social and governance due diligence by GHI,” ABS-CBN said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) yesterday.

“GHI is given 45 days from execution of the term sheet within which to complete the due diligence. The transaction is also subject to approvals of pertinent government authorities,” it said.

U-Pay is a fintech company engaged in the business of customer and merchant e-wallet, e-money services and other related services.

It has a Type “C” e-money issuer license issued by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and is duly registered to operate as a remittance and transfer company.

In March 2019, ABS-CBN announced that it is making an investment in the customer and merchant e-wallet, e-market services business through a joint venture with information technology services company iBayad Online Ventures.

ABS-CBN said then that the joint venture company would initially have an authorized capital stock of P100 million, of which P51 million would be subscribed by the company.

GHI, for its part, announced last month its venture into fintech service through a proposed collaboration with Aleta Planet, a Singapore-based member of UnionPay International, for the issuance of virtual cards, as well as the provision of cross-border money remittance services

Aleta Planet will issue co-branded virtual UnionPay cards to individual clients through Greenergy and its affiliates, according to the proposed collaboration.

This, in turn, will enable ease of payment collection and a fully digital cross-border money remittance service to UnionPay accounts.

Through the collaboration, more Filipino consumers will attain financial inclusion, widening the net on the unbanked and underbanked sectors of society as they can now make use of virtual accounts and cross-border remittance services.

Greenergy has been constantly evolving as a business. Tiu announced recently that he was converting Greenergy into a holding firm to own Agrinurture Inc. (ANI), his agro-commercial business. – Iris Gonzales