Pan-European online gambling operator Bwin.party digital entertainment has decided to spin off its payments platform into an independent entity dubbed Kalixa. The Kalixa Group intends to operate in Europe, the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. Kalixa CEO Ed Chandler says the company’s focus will be on ‘trimming the fat’ in the traditional payment chain by eliminating the middlemen standing between the merchant and the customer.
The company will provide a suite of products including Kalixa Pay, a digital wallet tool funded by a Kalixa-issued prepaid Mastercard; Kalixa Pro, a mobile chip-and-PIN reader-equipped point-of-sale solution tied to Kalixa Pay accounts; and Kalixa Accept, an acquiring solution enabling merchants to accept payments via more than 200 online methods. The spinoff comes about 15 months after Bwin.party publicly mused about taking its payments platform down the initial public offering (IPO) route with an aim to “monetize the business.” No word on whether the IPO’s still a go, given Bwin.party’s own IPO happened two years ago this month, and the company has yet to come within 35p of its 205p peak on the day of its IPO.