Razer (1337.HK)

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Gaming company Razer to expand payments network to 54 million merchants via tie-up with Visa
* Southeast Asia has seen its mobile payments landscape grow rapidly in recent years, driven by high mobile penetration rates

Iris Deng  
Published: 9:13am, 24 Jun, 2019

Gaming hardware company Razer is expanding its payments network through a partnership with Visa, which will allow Razer’s e-wallet users to pay at 54 million Visa merchants globally.

Without the need for a bank account or a credit card, up to 60 million users of Razer’s online payments service, Razer Pay, will be able to use the newly-developed virtual prepaid solution by Visa in their e-wallet to make payments wherever Visa is accepted, according to an announcement by Razer’s fintech arm and Visa on Monday.

The partnership is tapping into the under-banked, tech-savvy population in Southeast Asia that is undergoing a shift to digital payments. Only 27 per cent of Southeast Asia’s 600 million people have a bank account, according to KPMG. Yet, 51 per cent of them are monthly active internet users, according to a report by Google and Temasek in 2017.

“We want to make sure that we are able to introduce the benefits of mobile and digital payments to [the under-banked and under-served population in Southeast Asia], in order to bring them up to the formal financial system,” Chris Clark, regional president of Visa Asia Pacific, said in a phone interview.

The new Visa prepaid service will roll out in the coming month in Southeast Asia, starting from Malaysia and Singapore where Razer Pay is already available, before expanding to other countries including the Philippines where the launch of Razer’s e-wallet is in the pipeline, according to Limeng Lee, the company’s chief strategy officer.

“Fintech is the extension of what we have been doing. We’re currently focusing on Southeast Asia where we see massive opportunity. There’s a huge youth demographic and a lot of them are gamers... and these are usually the early adopters of new technology,” Lee said.

Southeast Asia has seen its mobile payments landscape grow rapidly in recent years, driven by high mobile penetration rates and the popularity of mobile services. Vietnam, for instance, has seen the highest growth globally in mobile payments use in the past year, with six Southeast Asian countries, including Singapore and Malaysia, in the top 10 markets for the shift to mobile, according to a survey by PwC in April this year.

More details in https://www.scmp.com/tech/enterprises/ar...-merchants

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Take-private deal could value Razer at up to $4.5 bln -sources
* Consortium to offer up to HK$4/shr, eyes NY listing, sources say
* Aims to value company at up to HK$35 bln -sources
* It is also in talks with CVC Capital on deal, say sources

By Julie Zhu and Kane Wu
November 16, 2021 4:26 PM +07

HONG KONG, Nov 16 (Reuters) - A consortium led by top executives of Razer Inc plans to value the Hong Kong-listed maker of gaming hardware at up to HK$35 billion ($4.5 billion) in a deal to take it private, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Chairman Min-Liang Tan and non-executive director Kaling Lim, with a combined stake of nearly 60% in Razer, lead the group offering up to HK$4 a share, the two sources said, or almost double its average price of HK$2.1 over the past month.

The move comes as the consortium believes Razer, based in the United States and Singapore, has been undervalued in Hong Kong, where investors typically pay more attention to tech firms from mainland China, they added.

The sources declined to be identified because of confidentiality constraints.

Razer declined to comment. Tan and Lim also declined to comment on a Reuters query made via the company.

Shares of Razer were up more than 10% by 0521 GMT on Tuesday, after giving up some of their increase of 23% in afternoon trade following the Reuters report.

In late October, the company said in a filing Tan and Lim were in preliminary talks with financial investors to explore the possibility of a transaction.

The consortium is also in talks with private equity firm CVC Capital Partners for the buyout, said one of the two sources, and two others with knowledge of the matter.

Buyout firm KKR (KKR.N) has also studied the deal but has yet to decide whether to invest, said the first two sources and another person.

CVC and KKR declined to comment.

The talks have advanced and the consortium aims to announce the deal by the end of 2021, the first two sources said.

It aims to eventually list Razer in New York to exploit higher valuations for tech stocks, they added.

More details in https://www.reuters.com/business/razer-e...021-11-16/