Grab puts partnership with Wirecard on hold: report

This is days after the troubled firm disclosed a $2.92b financial hole.

Southeast Asian ride-hailing and payments company Grab had put a partnership with German payments firm Wirecard on hold, days after the latter disclosed a $2.92b (US$2.1b) financial hole, according to a report from Reuters.

“We have not begun business integration work on the Wirecard partnership and we are pausing the partnership till further notice,” a spokeswoman from Grab said.

The two companies had struck a payments agreement in March under which Wirecard was to process transactions made via the GrabPay e-wallet, starting with markets in Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore.

Wirecard had not begun processing payments or signing up merchants on behalf of Grab, whose e-wallet is accepted by more than 600,000 merchants and small businesses in the region.

This week, Wirecard’s former boss was arrested on suspicion of falsifying its accounts, after the payments firm disclosed the financial hole and questioned whether trustees had actually held money on its behalf.

Here’s more from Reuters.

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