Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has advised leading Africa-focused private investment firm Helios Investment Partners (Helios) on its acquisition of a 76 per cent stake in TPAY Mobile FZ-LLC (TPAY) from A15, a tech investment fund based in Egypt.

TPAY is a fast growing direct carrier billing provider in the Middle East and North African region. The sellers, A15, and senior management will remain minority shareholders. Cavendish Corporate Finance advises the shareholders of TPAY.

With offices in Cairo and the UAE, TPAY currently operates across 16 countries with almost half of its total transaction volume coming from African markets such as Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. TPAY provides a much-needed mobile payment solution in markets with low banking penetration and high mobile adoption. TPAY gives online merchants access to an addressable market of 673 million potential users, all through a single application programming interface connection. Since its launch, TPAY has processed 622 million transactions.

The Norton Rose Fulbright team was led by partner Bayo Odubeko, who was assisted by senior associate Nariman Armaly and associate Oji Adoh.

Bayo Odubeko commented: “We are delighted to have advised on this transaction which is one of the largest to date in the direct carrier billing mobile payments sector in Africa. Payments technologies and infrastructure in the Middle East and Africa are developing rapidly. As global payment volumes continue to increase, we anticipate more M&A activity in the sector.”

Norton Rose Fulbright has extensive experience in advising clients on a wide range of legal and regulatory issues in the global mobile payments sector in both emerging and developed markets.

The firm has advised on many of the largest transactions in the African payments sector, including the acquisition of leading Egyptian mobile payment provider Fawry and the financing of Nigeria’s largest mobile payment company Paga.