Mozaik Investments acquires majority stake in fintech Pago Romania from Banca Transilvania

Investment company Mozaik Investments acquired from Banca Transilvania the 51.12% stake it held in Timesafe, the company which operates the payment app Pago in Romania.

This is the first in a series of transactions that will consolidate the companies operating Pago in Romania, Poland and Italy, the company said.

The consolidation aims to create a unified structure, a new company that will also receive the necessary funding to accelerate the growth of the business, in Romania and other European markets. Upon finalizing this consolidation process, the resulting company will be valued at EUR 10 million, it said.

The existing partnership between Banca Transilvania and Pago for offering bill payments and the other payment types available in the app will remain unchanged.

Pago is an app for managing and paying all utility bills from one account: users get them updated in real time, organized by the due date on one screen and pay them in a few seconds. More than 380 utility providers from Romania are available in the app. It can also be used for mobile top-ups, purchasing insurance, paying taxes, making real-time money transfers and donations. Pago was also launched in Poland and is soon to be launched in Italy and other countries in the EU.

"With this transaction, Pago is moving to the next phase of growth, in which we will focus on the international expansion and on adding new features for our users in Romania. We have already started a recruitment campaign with the objective of adding 20 new members to the team over the next six months. We are happy to have along for this journey a new partner, who is just as ambitious as we are about what Pago will become in the next few years. We would like to thank Banca Transilvania for their support over the last few years. Our operational partnership will remain just as strong after this transaction, as we will continue to work together to bring the Pago experience to as many users in Romania as possible," Adrian Cighi and Alexandru-Gala Popescu, co-founders of Pago, said.

"We are very pleased with our new partnership with Pago, and we believe that there are all the right premises to continue this success story: a strong and experienced team led by two ambitious founders and a product that has more than 230,000 active users in Romania and Poland. We have big development plans, both locally and regionally, and we are confident that together we will achieve them," Vlad Bușilă, managing partner at Mozaik Investments, said.

Mozaik Investments is an investment company established in 2019 through the partnership between entrepreneur Sacha Dragic, also the founder of Superbet, private equity veteran Roland Haas and former M&A banker Vlad Bușilă. It is funded by several private investors both locally and regionally. Mozaik is looking to invest in companies with high growth potential, offering both capital and financial know-how in return to minority stakes. The investment tickets varies between EUR 2 to 5 million, and the holding period can reach up to 10 years. The focus is on the Central and Eastern European region that is covered through the two offices in Vienna and Bucharest.