Uber Technologies Inc on Thursday denied the report of a German magazine which claimed that Wirecard is under consideration of the ride sharing firm to be hired as its main payment partner to replace Dutch e-commerce company Adyen.
Replying to the Reuters request seeking the accuracy of the report published in Manager Magazine, an Uber spokeswoman in her email said that Uber is not in talks with Wirecard for card acquiring.
Acquiring is a financial payment system in which acquirer on behalf of merchants processes payments made by the consumers through their credit or debit cards by allowing merchants to accept card payments from card-issuing banks or financial institution within an association.
Manager Magazine published a 17-pager special report on Wirecard, in which it quoted the remarks of Wirecard’s CEO Markus Braun that his company was in talks with more than a dozen companies which have backing of SoftBank Group and those discussions are already at the advanced stages.
While quoting those comments, Manager Magazine in very next sentence, without stating a clearer attribution mentioned that Uber remained “flirting with switching from main competitor Adyen” to Wirecard.
A SoftBank fund earlier this year made an investment of more than $1 billion in Wirecard through a convertible bond for a five-year term, a move that paved the way for Wirecard to make a handful of payment deals with SoftBank-backed companies, which also includes AUTO1, a Germany-based platform for trading used cars.
After a series of reports in Financial Times starting earlier in this year, Wirecard is facing hard time and going through intense scrutiny as the FT’s report alleged the German payment company of being involved in fraud and accounting malpractices to fabricate elevated profits. Wirecard though denied all the allegations of doing unlawful practices, but has haired auditor KMPG to investigate the allegations by the newspaper.
