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Razer Collabs with Visa to Move Forward with its Fintech Arm

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Razer and Visa Partenership
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Razer the fintech gaming company has joined its hands with the world’s leader in digital payments, Visa, to initiate an unusual type of partnership. The two companies will be working together to develop a new virtual prepaid solution for many of Southeast Asia’s, especially the unbanked and underserved, consumers.

The company announced that its fintech arm, Razer Fintech, will be joining the fast-track program from Visa, as a revolutionary idea, aiming to transform the way the gamers make payments. The fast-track program from Visa has been specially designed for fintech companies to help them easily access 54 million merchant locations around the world that accept Visa.

The partnership between the two companies will lead to developing a new virtual payment service, that will empower the Razer Pay e-wallet and give its users access to the global Visa payment network. With this new service, the unbanked users will be able to top up the wallet, make online payment through it, and also, will be able to withdraw cash through it. The scope of Visa is already huge, and with the collab, the two companies will be targeting to the 60 million Razer users. Noticeably, the company has not talked about rolling out a physical payment card along with the service.

“We are pleased to partner with such a forward-looking and innovative company that understands the value and importance of expanding access to digital payments. This announcement reaffirms Visa’s commitment to the fast-growing and digitally savvy Southeast Asia region. Together, Visa and Razer Fintech have the opportunity to transform the payments experience for not only the gaming community but many of Southeast Asia’s unbanked and underserved consumers as well”, Chris Clark, Regional President, Asia Pacific, Visa, stated during the announcement.

The two companies have said that they will be rolling out a mini app for the new payment service and will also include great offers for its users. The app will be integrated into Razer’s virtual wallet app.

Razer to Close its Game Store as the Part of its ‘Realignment Plans’

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Razer-Game-Store
Image Sourec: techaeris.com

Razer has announced that it is going to shut down its a year old digital game store by the end of this month.

The gaming peripheral manufacturing company, Razer, is one of the dominant brands in the gaming industry. Last year, it had launched its digital game store, to try its hands on digital distribution platform for PC games, to earn a share in the profits of the game sales business. But even before completing one year of its Game Store, the company announced to close it down by defining it “as part of realignment plans.”

“We regret to announce that Razer Game Store will cease operations on February 28, 2019, at 0100hrs Pacific Time as part of the company’s realignment plans,” Razer wrote in a statement. “It has been a privilege for us to recommend and deliver great digital game deals to you. We have been extremely fortunate to have you as part of our awesome community. Thank you for the support and making all this possible.”

Razer launched its Game Store in April 2018, as an effort to get into the digital gaming business. The Game Store was designed to provide its users with access to thousands of online games at one place. The store was launched as an opponent to its contemporaries like Steam and Amazon, and it included games from Razer’s partners including Ubisoft, Bethesda, Bandai Namco, Deep Silver and Rockstar. The platform also provided games from other stores through Steam or Uplay product keys.

The company also provided many offers and perks to its users through the platform like credits to earn for Razer’s silver loyalty program, attractive discounts over Razer’s games and hardware, etc.

We can only estimate from this unexpected announcement from Razer, that even after putting all its efforts, the launching of the Game Store did not go well according to its plan. Also, the company has not given any other statement over why it is closing its short-lived Game Store so abruptly. Although it is not the end for the cheap games from Razer and also all the pre-orders that have been made to the Razer’s Game store will be fulfilled before the Game Store shuts down. The company will also continue operating its Razer Gold and Razer Silver programs, through which the users can avail offers and discount on the Razer hardware.

Min-Liang Tan : The Lawyer, Turned Billionaire Gaming Tycoon

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Having your name ranked with leaders like Elon Musk and Jack Ma, in the Top 10 Most Influential Leaders in Tech, is a real achievement, and when you are a non-tech person, then it is huge. It’s the Singaporean entrepreneur, Min-Liang Tan, who got his name ranked ahead of these two tech savvies. Tan studied law and eventually, ended up starting up a tech company, i.e. Razer and became one of the most influential people in the Tech world. This billionaire from Singapore is in love with video games and shares an inspirational story with the world.

Early Life

Tan was born on 5 November 1977, in Singapore. His father, Tan Kim Lee, worked as a real estate consultant and his mother, Low Ken Yin, is a homemaker. He has three siblings, one of whom is the famous clinician-scientist Min-Han Tan. One of the other two is also a doctor, and one is a renowned lawyer.

He completed his primary education from Raffles Institution, and then, attended the Hwa Chong Junior College, to pursue high school education. Later, he went to join National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Law. He got ranked 20 in his master’s degree.

Early Career & Founding Razer

As soon as he completed his education, Tan started working as an advocate and solicitor for the Supreme Court of Singapore. But the future had held some other plans for him.

Tan, since his childhood, loved playing video games, as he was not much into outdoor games. His father had brought an Apple II computer, for him and his brother, upon which he played lots of games.

Image Source: alchetron.com

The idea of starting a video gaming peripheral manufacturing company came up to Tan, when he met the future co-founder of Razer, Robert Krakoff, through a social media website, in 1999. The two coincided on their interest for video games and started working together to design the world’s first gaming mouse – the “Razer Boomslang,” when Tan was still in college. Even, after graduating in 2002, along with his job as an advocate, he devoted most of the time on working for Razer.

Finally, in 2005, the two acquired the rights to the Razer brand and Founded the company Razer. The two headquarters of Razer are located at San Francisco and Singapore. Tan holds the post of the CEO of the company.

The company produces the peripherals for gamers, and the software for those peripherals, but does not publish games. The motto of the company is “For Gamers. By Gamers”, as both of the co-founders are avid video game lovers.

As one of the first products of Razer, the Razer Boomslang was more responsive, accurate, and faster than what tech companies were producing at that time, it attracted the attention of many venture capitalists. The company started obtaining funding from many investors, and it started manufacturing other gaming hardware, including headsets, a handheld gaming device, the Razer Edge gaming tablet computer and Razer Blade laptops, etc.

In 2015, Razer acquired software division of video-game company Ouya. It also acquired THX in 2016 and Nextbit in 2017.

In 2017, the company went public through an IPO in Hong Kong and was the 2nd most successful IPO of 2017 in Hong Kong stock exchange. In November 2017, the company launched its first Smartphone named Razer Phone.

Personal Life

Tan, currently, lives in Singapore in his family house with his parents. However, he keeps travelling back and forth from Singapore to San Francisco. Tan despite being an owner of a gaming hardware manufacturing company lives a life of a celebrity as many of Singapore people consider him as their idol. People get tattoos of the company logo, and one of them even tattooed Tan’s face on his arm.

In 2015, Tan was listed among the “Top 10 Most Influential Leaders in Tech” by Juniper Research. He was also named in the list of “The 25 Most Creative People in Tech” by Business Insider and was ranked one of the top 40 most powerful people in gaming by Kotaku. TechinAsia ranked him No 1 of the 30 top South East Asia tech founders and was also named the Asian of the Year in 2016 by the Straits Times.

In 2016, he was among the Forbes Singapore Rich List with a net worth of $600 million and was the youngest Singaporean self-made billionaire.

Tan is also in philanthropy and in 2014, he donated a US$10,000 to raise funds for ALS and a £10,000 to fight Motor Neuron Disease, in 2015.