Monitise Acquires Fellow Mobile Provider Clairmail

U.K. mobile money provider Monitise has agreed to acquire U.S. mobile banking vendor Clairmail, the companies announced yesterday. The acquisition is for $173 million, pending shareholder and regulatory approval.

The combined entity will serve 13 million registered consumers across four continents. According to the companies, Clairmail and Monitise process billions of transactions a year and more than $10 billion of payments and transfers on a current weekly annualized basis.

Both companies have aggressively entered the mobile payments space. Monitise recently partnered with Visa to roll out mobile payments services in India.

[For more on Monitise and mobile payments, click here.]

A third of the top 50 North American financial institutions -- including 8 of the top 13 -- are clients of either company, alongside hundreds of smaller and medium sized financial institutions customers.

"Clairmail shares Monitise's customer-centric approach and dedication to bringing the best possible mobile experience and technology through constant innovation and a focus on delivering bank-grade mobile services to their customers," said Alastair Lukies, Monitise Group CEO, in a statement.

Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio