Payday loan outfit Wonga is moving into the online payments market with the acquisition of BillPay, dubbed the PayPal of Germany.
The acquisition of BillPay follows the launch of Wonga's consumer loans service in Poland and the purchase of an online, short-term consumer credit business in Spain during the past 12 months.
Founded in 2009, BillPay has around two million end-users and works with over 3500 online shops. The business is a key payments partner with a number of the largest e-commerce merchants in Europe - including CBR Group (CECIL and Street One), Runnerspoint, Fahrrad.de, DriveNow and Home24 - across a broad range of segments from travel and fashion to electronics and furniture.
BillPay offers people a fast and secure way to shop online with a range of different payment methods, from invoicing to instalment credit.
In a statement, Wonga says: "The acquisition significantly accelerates our development into a broad-based, digital finance group and will also speed the development of our PayLater online retail product, together with the company's international expansion."
PayLater, launched by Wonga earlier this year, provides a checkout financing option, based on low-cost instalment payments.
Errol Damelin, Wonga CEO, says: "As well as giving Wonga Group a presence in Europe's second largest online retail market, this deal continues our on-going transformation into a fully international, digital finance business with operations across three continents and more than three million customers."are entirely complementary and we look forward to working with them."
Financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.