Exclusive: Strengthened After IPO, Safecharge Searches For Acquisitions in Asia Pacific

SafeCharge, the payments solutions provider specializing in Forex brokers and online gambling sites, launched its shares for trading on the 2nd of April with an initial public offering (IPO) which raised new equity capital for the company to the sum of $125 million, 25% more than it initially expected.

Exactly a week after the IPO, Forex Magnates sat down with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SafeCharge, David Avgi at the company’s offices for an interview about the current state of the firm and his future plans following the successful IPO. Accompanying us for the interview were our colleagues at Payment Magnates for the expertise on the industry.

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Speaking about the IPO, Mr. Avgi explained that the company selected the London Stock Exchange as the venue for the stock listing because almost 50% of the international payment solutions provider’s clients including their end-clients come from the UK market. SafeCharge focuses on offering services to firms in regulated industries according to its CEO and the UK offers regulations both to online sports-betting and financial trading in one jurisdiction that is well respected globally.

Besides the prestige and brand equity a company gains from being publicly traded on a stock exchange, it also becomes much easier to raise capital and acquire competitors as they can be paid in stocks or cash. Mr. Avgi told Forex Magnates that the firm is now setting its sights on expanding to the Asia Pacific region and it intends to gain a foothold there by acquiring regional payment competitors and banks.

Safecharge is also set to expand to new industries such as the travel industry, offering payment services to hotel booking sites for example, retail payments industry and to the online video games industry as it recently signed an agreement with mobile game developer Gaijin Entertainment. Despite its plans to expand to new markets the company is still committed to the industries were its most established in such as online financial trading as evident by expanding the list of brokers it works with to include Cyprus regulated firm, RoboForex just a few days ago.

The complete interview is now available at Payment Magnates.