Powa Technologies

History

Powa was founded in 2007 by British entrepreneur Dan Wagner. The company is attributed as receiving the largest Series A funding round for a technology start-up, collecting $76 million in August 2013. The investment attracted the attention of David Cameron. In June 2014, Powa Technologies acquired Hong Kong business MPayMe and its ZNAP technology. Following the acquisition, Wagner suggested that Powa had an enterprise value of $2.6 billion. Powa technologies also partnered up with Iconnect pos to distribute products in a bundled package.

In 2015, they announced that their planned LSE £1.6 billion float would be put on hold until the following year.

As of early 2016, the company had run into financial difficulties, missing payments to staff and third parties. Its Hong Kong office had failed to pay its employees wages on time and to its ex-employees within 7 days, with some of the employees having to seek help from the Labor Department.

On 28 January 2016, Alessandro Gadotti became CEO of PowaTag in the effort of restructuring the business. During the administration he also served as interim CEO for the Group supporting the process and the sale of the companies in the group.

On 19 February 2016, Powa Technologies was placed into administration and on 23 February 2016 Powa Technologies made 74 of its London-based staff redundant.

On 24 February 2016, Powa Technologies filed for bankruptcy and laid off most of their employees

On 25 February 2016, Business Insider revealed that most of Powa's 'contracts' had in fact only been non-binding Letters of Intent

On 2 March 2016, Sky News revealed that two of Powa's core businesses, PowaWeb and PowaTag, have been sold. Under separate deals, PowaTag has been sold to a private consortium, while PowaWeb has been sold in a buyout backed by Greenlight Digital, a UK-based digital group whose interests include Greenlight Commerce Platform and OneHydra for SEO.

After the collapse of the business a series of articles by the Financial Times called into question several of the claims that had previously been made. Powa's self-proclaimed 2014 valuation of $2.6 billion was investigated and it was concluded that $106 million (£75 million) was a more accurate figure. The claimed "10-year strategic alliance with ‘limitless’ potential” deal with China UnionPay that Dan Wagner personally described in a quote to the BBC as “Why did China UnionPay decide to partner with a little British technology company? We’ve trumped ApplePay and the rest of the world here.” was found to be unknown to China UnionPay who had their lawyers request that Powa stop making the false claims and the majority of the partners upon which the investment and consequent valuation had been based, were found to be just Letters of Intent at best.