Truecaller acquires Chillr to enter into payment space in India

Bengaluru: Phone number search engine Truecaller on Wednesday announced a strategic investment into the payment space in India by acquiring Chillr, the country's first multi-bank payments app.

This was in continuation of Truecaller's announcement last year that it will foray into the digital payments segment, incorporating UPI-based transfers in its app.

Truecaller co-founder and chief strategy officer Nami Zarringhalam told reporters here that the founders of Chillr, Sony Joy, Anoop Sankar, Mohamed Galib and Lishoy Bhaskaran and therest of the organisation will join Truecaller.

Sony Joywill be the vice-president of Truecaller Pay. Zarringhalam was confident that Chillr's team of engineers and designers will bring to Truecaller their expertise and understanding of mobile payments.

He also said the company intends to leverage its full reach of over 150 million users in India as well as its 300+ existing partnerships in India to enable Truecaller Pay as a platform.

"By acquiring Chillr, we are reaffirming our commitment to mobile payments and strengthening our plans to increase its adoption amongst our user base. We will, together, have a far bigger impact in this space through the foundation of the team's expertise and a strong user base that trust our platform and use it on a daily basis," said Zarringhalam.

He, however, did not disclose the amount paid and the terms and conditions for acquiring the Chillr, which was launched in 2014. Truecaller has 65 people in India.

The co-founder of Chillr Sony Joy said, "While ICICI partnership is already there with Truecaller, going forward wewill have multiple bank partnerships also. We are doing a multi-bank model with UPI. So you will see lot more banks on the platform that is working closely with us."

To a question on the issue of privacy getting breached and wrong details fed in Truecaller's system, Zarringhalam said "What started to happen was that people started to tag other users as well, whether it was a prank or serious. That was an issue. A couple of months back we actually rolled out the capabilities of users being themselves being able to determine what their types are."

Agreeing with the contention that one should be able tocontrol their information, he said Truecaller had always tried to be a step ahead regarding privacy and abiding by the regulations. In this regard, it implemented 'right to forget' where one can unlist themselves from Truecaller.