VBill

About vBill
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Beijing, VBill offers a full range of payment solutions, including bank card acquiring, QR code and other omni-channel payment, Internet payment and others. By leveraging its extensive merchant base, VBill also provides value-added services, such as fintech-enabled consumer lending as well as credit card and loan application facilitation. Under the leadership of the founding management team, possessing more than 20 years of industry experience, VBill has achieved remarkable growth since inception, and is today a leading merchant acquirer with a comprehensive service offering, extensive merchant base and innovative and extensive sales coverage network.

With a strong management team and the support and relevant payment services experience from the EQT Network, VBill is well-positioned to capture the attractive growth opportunities in the large and fast-growing third-party payment market in China. The strategy includes continued expansion into lower-tier cities and penetration in SMEs, developing value-added services, and opportunistically identifying overseas expansion opportunities in Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Market trends and Drivers
The offline third-party payment market in China is large and fast-growing with a total market size of ~RMB 42tn in transaction volume in 2018 and is expected to grow at ~20% annually to reach ~RMB 127tn by 2024.

Apart from traditional bank cards, China has undergone significant development and proliferation in payment innovation such as QR code payments, Internet payment and NFC to evolve towards a cashless society. With such diversity and complexity in payment processing, an integrated payment solution provider such as VBill plays an important role to warrant seamless transactions between consumers, merchants, banks, card and e-wallet issuers, and settlement networks.

Furthermore, the industry is growing beyond transaction processing with increasing sophistication. Vertically, there is strong potential and demand for industry-specific payment solutions and cross-border payment capabilities, while horizontally, payment solution providers are expanding into value-add services such as microlending and credit card application facilitation to enhance user stickiness and monetization.

Investment Potential
The diversification of payment methods in the fragmented Chinese market makes merchant acquiring a complicated business. By leveraging VBill’s technological advantages, large merchant base and EQT’s expertise, VBill is well-positioned to transform into a leading integrated payment solution provider, gain further market share and capitalize on the secular trend of going cashless in China.

To fully realize the value of its large and sticky user base, VBill intends to continue developing its core merchant acquiring business while actively expanding into other adjacent businesses with the goal of becoming a comprehensive fin-tech solutions provider.

EQT is excited to support the continued growth of VBill by combining the Company’s technological and execution capabilities with EQT’s network and resources across the globe to tap into the massive overseas markets as a fin-tech platform provider. EQT will also support VBill in its goal to be the cross-border payment partner of choice through equity investments or strategic alliances.