OREANDA-NEWS. Hitachi, Ltd. announced that it has entered into share transfer agreements relating to all the issued equity shares of Prizm Payment Services Pvt Ltd. ("Prizm Payment Services") with all the company's shareholders, including Winvest Holdings (India) Private Limited, Sequoia Capital, Axis Bank and other minority shareholders. Prizm Payment Services is a leading provider of payment services using ATMs and POS systems to banks and financial institutions in India.

Hitachi and Prizm Payment Services will target the end of February 2014 for a completion of the share transfer, in accordance with the terms of the agreements and subject to the regulatory approvals required to consummate the transaction.

Hitachi sees India as an important region in its global strategy and is stepping up development of the Hitachi Group's Social Innovation Business in the country. Hitachi aims to grow revenues in India by nearly 3 times to 300.0 billion yen by the fiscal year ending March 31, 2016, compared with the year ended March 31, 2012. Furthermore, in the information & telecommunication systems business, a fulcrum of the Social Innovation Business, Hitachi has set forth the growth strategy of expanding global businesses and strengthening service businesses in order to create a business portfolio with growth potential.

In India, the IT market is expected to grow rapidly, with some forecasts calling for an IT investment growth rate exceeding 10% for 5 straight years from 2013 through 2017, driven by economic expansion. Meanwhile, financial institutions in the country are working to roll out various services, including mobile device-based payment services. In accordance with this, the number of ATMs and POS systems, which have a low penetration rate at present, is increasing. ATMs in particular are estimated to nearly triple in number in 4 years from around 100,000 in 2012. In India, non-financial-institution service providers are expanding ATM outsourcing business, providing banks and financial institutions with comprehensive services, extending from deploying the ATMs as its own assets, managing the cash-in-transit services, to managing, monitoring and maintaining ATM operations.