The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) on Thursday announced it has cleared the proposed joint venture between Ayala Corporation and Japanese mega-conglomerate Mitsubishi Corporation.<\/p>\n
In particular, Mitsubishi is acquiring a 50% stake in Ayala’s AC Ventures Holding Corporation.<\/p>\n
In approving the proposed transaction, the antitrust watchdog said Mitsubishi’s investment in AC Ventures would not significantly reduce competition in the relevant market for the provision of Quick Response code-based digital payments to merchants.<\/p>\n
AC Ventures will be jointly controlled by Ayala and Mitsubishi post-transaction.<\/p>\n
The company is Ayala’s venture capital arm, the parent company Globe Fintech Innovations Inc. (Mynt), which in turn is the firm behind GCash operator G-Xchange Inc. and tech-based microlender Fuse Lending.<\/p>\n
The PCC, in its decision, cited “the small market share held by GCash in the provision of QR-based Person-to-Merchant payments, as well as the strong governmental push for interoperability in QR-based payments across the country.”<\/p>\n
While Mitsubishi indirectly owns convenience store chain Lawson Philippines, which accepts QR code-based payments from consumers, the antitrust watchdog said it has limited presence and that the transaction would not result in substantial lessening of competition, according to PCC.<\/p>\n
Person-to-merchant payments, through the use of QR codes, enables businesses to accept digital payments from consumers for goods and services that the business sells.<\/p>\n
The Philippine Competition Act mandates the PCC to review mergers and acquisitions to ensure transactions do not lead to a substantial lessening of competition in relevant markets. \u2014 VDV, GMA Integrated News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) on Thursday announced it has cleared the proposed joint venture between Ayala Corporation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[21428,21430,21427,21429,2306,21431,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-36176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-ac-ventures","9":"tag-ayala-corporation","10":"tag-gcash","11":"tag-mitsubishi-corp","12":"tag-mobile","13":"tag-mynt","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}