Viva Republica tightens its grip on Toss Payments with additional stake acquisition

Viva Republica, the operator of Korea's third app-based lender Toss Bank, has acquired an additional stake in its e-payment subsidiary Toss Payments, raising its ownership to about 70 percent.

According to industry sources on Thursday, Viva Republica purchased about 20 percent stake in Toss Payments from a second majority shareholder in a recent capital raise worth 61.4 billion won ($43 million). Unlike an ordinary capital raise, the transaction was realized through Viva Republica’s exercise of a call option for the stake owned by a special purpose company.

Back in 2020, Viva Republica acquired e-payment business from LG Uplus for about 365 billion won to jump into the e-payment market. Viva Republica invited LB Private Equity and Premier Partners to finance its acquisition and signed a call option contract with the partners. In an audit report released last year, Viva Republica and the SPC controlled 48.5 percent of Toss Payments, each.

Viva Republica said it decided to exercise the call option to make its business environment more stable. It has no plan to list Toss Payments for now.

Toss Payments raised 380.3 billion won in commission income but posted an operating loss of 30.3 billion won last year.

Viva Republica raised about 530 billion won in recent two rounds of share sales and its corporate value was evaluated at about 9.1 trillion won.

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