Mon, 25 Feb 2013 | BUSINESS SALE
The online payments provider and rival to Paypal, Skrill, is being prepared for a sale.
Skrill, which owns the Moneybookers brand, is expected to achieve up to £600 million in a sale. It has been in the hands of Investcorp, the Middle Eastern investment house, for the past six years. It is thought the firm has called in advisors to help with a sale.
London-based Skrill has 33 million account holders, who use the service to buy and sell goods safely, and to transfer money online.
Moneybookers was founded in 2001 by Daniel Klein and Benjamin Kullmann, and pioneered in gaining an electronic money licence from the Financial Services Authority. The businessmen later sold a 51 per cent holding to Investcorp in 2007. The deal valued the business at £85 million.
The new owners changed the name of the business to Skrill, which is slang for money, and it has since become one of the fastest growing private firms in Britain, thanks to the rise in consumers using the internet to make payments and manage their money.
About 135,000 merchants - ranging from small businesses to very large ones such as Facebook, eBay, and Skype - use the service to secure their customers’ purchases. Skrill has customers in 200 countries, and offers them use of over 100 payment options and 40 currencies.
Skrill’s customers can make online payments while not showing any personal financial information, and send and receive money by only using an email address.
This will be the third time that Investcorp will have attempted to dispose of Skrill. It had tried to sell the company in 2009 for £400 million and then in 2010 a proposal for a £500 million float was put on the backburner.
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