Major Acquisition in Mobile Money Market Completed

Monitise today announced that it has completed its acquisition of mobile money competitor Clairmail. The two tech companies specialize in providing financial institutions with mobile banking, payments and commerce solutions and handle more than a billion combined transactions each year. The combined client list of the two companies will now include Visa, HSBC, U.S. Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and FIS.

Monsitise said in a statement that the acquisition will give them a leading edge in the mobile banking and payments market. The company sited projections from Gartner that predict that the worldwide value of mobile transactions will total $171.5 billion this year, a 62 percent increase from last year.

"Banks' involvement at the center of the mobile money supply chaingives consumers the confidence and security to embrace new service both online and offline from merchants, affinity partners and other consumer brands, all delivered across the device of choice for six billion of the world's population, namely the cell phone," said Alastair Lukies, Monitise's chief executive.

The combined companies handle over a 100 million transactions a month in the U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and India. Monitise and Clairmail are projected to have combined revenues close to $100 million in 2012.

"With our acquisition of Clairmail and our activities in the U.S. and globally, we are perfectly placed, with the support of our strategic partners, to help our clients in the battle for customer engagement," Lukies added.

Monitise's acquisition of Clairmail was first announced back in March and the full acquisition approved at Monitise's general meeting yesterday. Monitise said that the combined number of users of the two companies has increased from 13 million to 15 million since the announcement of the acquisition in March.

[Related: Monitise Acquires Fellow Mobile Provider Clairmail]

Jonathan Camhi has been an associate editor with Bank Systems & Technology since 2012. He previously worked as a freelance journalist in New York City covering politics, health and immigration, and has a master's degree from the City University of New York's Graduate School ... View Full Bio