Truecaller has announced a strategic investment into the payment space by acquiring Chillr, India’s first multi-bank payments app launched in 2014 to further boost growth.
“Since launching Truecaller Pay in India in 2017, we’ve seen an increasing number of use cases to make the lives of our users in India easier. We see a lot of synergies and growth patterns in Sub-Sahara Africa, therefore we think it makes sense to explore the digital payment space more seriously,” says Truecaller Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Nami Zarringhalam.
With the launch of Truecaller Pay 2.0, the company has brought Banking & Payments features to the forefront of its app, and in the coming months, Truecaller is planning on rolling out Credit & other financial services to the masses in a mobile-first way in India. The company is now looking for ways to enter the payment space in Sub-Sahara Africa.
Earlier this year, Truecaller opened up their first office in Nairobi to expand in Sub-Sahara Africa and recruited Zakaria Hersi as Director of Partnerships for Africa. In his position, Zakaria has been spearheading Truecaller’s expansion in the region and forging partnerships with various eco-system players.
Truecaller started as a caller ID and spam blocking app for smartphones, but over the years Truecaller has transformed to a full-fledged communication app and has become one of the fastest growing consumer apps in Africa and has consistently been topping the App Store Charts across the continent.
“We are excited to join our teams together in our development centre in Bangalore and continue to work on bringing mobile payments to the masses. In the coming months, the Chillr app will be phased out while we integrate many of their features, and brand-new ones, into Truecaller that will further make payments simple and more efficient for our users”, the announcement further read.
