Taxi booking company Grab acquired India-based mobile payment start-up iKaaz as it continued to pursue its goal of becoming Southeast Asia’s universal payment platform.

Grab said it would integrate technology from the iKaaz merchant platform into GrabPay infrastructure to expand the types of payments it is able to process, increasing its potential to move into new markets. iKaaz provides technology enabling retailers to process mobile payments using NFC, QR code and audio identifiers.

The value of the deal was not disclosed.

GrabPay Southeast Asia MD Jason Thompson said: “iKaaz’s technology has served merchants and partners across different industries and in different settings, from parking lots and airports to retail stores and hotels. This rich set of offline payments features offers the flexibility needed to tailor our GrabPay platform to each country and partner in Southeast Asia.”

In a number of moves to step-up its payments play, the company tied-up with several wireless operators, including Singtel, and app developers. It also applied for an e-payments licence for the Philippines in December.

Having started as a taxi booking app in Malaysia, Grab expanded across several neighbouring countries in addition to developing payment service GrabPay. The company now processes 3.5 million transactions a day through its platform.

Grab aims to expand its services into every market in Southeast Asia by the end of 2018.