Powa Technologies was founded in 2007 by British entrepreneur Dan Wagner. The company is known for its commerce (both mobile and e-commerce) services. Of course, the real hallmark of Powa was its flagship product, the mobile application called “PowaTag.” In 2013, the company managed to get the largest Series A Funding round for a tech start-up ever at that point. They managed to get $76 million, which was so impactful it caught the attention of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and for good reason. That money seemed to help a lot, as it allowed them to buy up Hong Kong company MPayMe and its ZNAP technology too.
[Image via BBC]Wagner claimed the company, in 2014, was worth $2.6 billion. Yet their impressive PowaTag, pretty much just a Q.R. Scanner, was all they really had going for them at the time. Buying up MPayMe was supposed to help them out. By roughly 2016, investigations into Powa found that it was not even close to Wagner’s valuation of his company. It was worth, at minimum, $106 million. Wagner even claimed Powa had a strategic partnership with China UnionPay as he was trying to hype up Powa in the media. This was news to China UnionPay, who had their lawyers request Powa no longer make such claims. All of these issues led to Powa shutting down entirely.