Redwood City, Calif., December 5, 2011 – Omidyar Network today announced its investment in Rêv Worldwide, an innovator in payment solutions that address the needs of cash-based consumers and micro-merchants across both mature and developing markets. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.
Rêv’s centralized processing platform provides local distribution partners with the ability to offer individuals a broad range of financial services, including mobile payments, prepaid cards, reload networks and merchant processing while adapting to local currencies, customs, languages and laws.
“By partnering with leading banks, merchants and other large-scale customer aggregators, Rêv provides underserved individuals access to high-quality financial products and services,” said Omidyar Network Investment Director Chris Bishko. “Founders Bertrand and Roy Sosa have built a unique and powerful platform, offering an integrated, broad suite of products and services tailored to the needs of underserved consumers and merchants across multiple geographies. Rêv has the potential to impact millions of individuals and exemplifies the type of highly scalable and innovative model Omidyar Network seeks to support.”
Omidyar Network’s investment in Rêv represents the latest of several investments supporting entrepreneurial companies focused on providing high-impact financial products and services to underbanked individuals. Emphasis will be placed on those using innovative business models and technologies to scale massively and positively impact millions of individuals. Omidyar Network will also seek to support organizations with grants to address factors that strengthen the industry and help promote more efficient markets.
“We are delighted to expand our partnership with Omidyar Network to include our work at Rêv. Their team’s experience in supporting entrepreneurs in emerging markets, understanding of what it takes to grow a global financial services enterprise, and unwavering commitment to social impact is unparalleled. Together we will grow an amazing platform from which tens of millions will derive true financial empowerment,” said Rêv Co-founder Roy Sosa.
For more information about Rêv, please visit www.revworldwide.com.
About Omidyar Network
Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change. To date, Omidyar Network has committed nearly $450 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including microfinance, entrepreneurship, property rights, government transparency, consumer Internet and mobile. To learn more about Omidyar Network, please visit www.omidyar.com.