Tencent is taking a stake in Argentine mobile payment app Uala, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing Uala founder and CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri.
The equity investment will be used to continue developing Uala in South America’s second-largest economy, said the CEO, without revealing the financial details of the deal.
Barbieri said Tencent invested because it’s betting on what will happen in Argentina over the next 10 years, rather than what will happen in the next six months.
Tencent itself highlighted payment as one of its key infrastructure platforms in its 2018 annual report.
“Our total daily payment transaction volume exceeded 1 billion for 2018, driven by rapid growth in commercial payments, which represented more than half of the number of transactions. Our commercial payment revenue more than doubled year-on-year in 2018,” the company stated.
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