Rocket Internet’s Square clone PayLeven buys domain names in Asia; sets up company in S’pore

Asia, watch out. Rocket Internet‘s next clone could be coming your way very soon.

Called PayLeven, the Square clone’s corresponding domain names for Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, and Hong Kong have all been snapped up. The registrant organization for PayLeven.sg and PayLeven.in is “JADE 1360. GMBH”. For Payleven.in, the registrant name is Arnt Jeschke, the CFO and managing director of Rocket Internet.

It’s no secret that the Samwer Brothers are feverishly coming up with a copy of Square, a mobile payment company started by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey. But confusion reigned over what it would be called.

Previously thought to be Zenpay, TheNextWeb later reported that it would be called EvoPay instead. It then appeared that Rocket Internet had changed its mind.

Attempts to enter evopay.de now redirects to Payleven.de/en, which displays an error. But heading to Payleven.de does show both the German and English versions of the site. The product, which will be available on iOS and Android, looks very much like Square. It seems to work the same way too.

Further confirmation that PayLeven is the clone’s final name is the fact that Rocket Internet has registered a company called “PayLeven Singapore” with the governing authorities. The address used? The exact same one as the Samwer Brother’s other ventures in Singapore.

In the publicly-available business profile that SGE obtained, PayLeven Singapore is listed as a provider of “logistics, digital, and payment services”. It also deals with the “development, marketing, and provision of Internet services”.

The registration was apparently completed just over a week ago, on 7th June.

Facebook Pages for various Asian countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Philippines  — ghost towns for now — have also been set up.

Besides Asia, PayLeven will see a global rollout in the UK, France, and Germany. Job ads have been put up on a UK site.

PayLeven’s entry to the Asia mobile commerce scene is predictable. A PayPal study has found that in Singapore alone, the mobile commerce industry has grown seven-fold to US$259M in 2011 over a span of one year. It is projected to rise to US$2.45B in 2015.

The same upward trend is expected to be seen throughout Asia, which is why other Square clones like Swiff and PayPal Here have already jumped into the market before PayLeven.

Besides establishing its latest — and possibly greatest — venture, Rocket Internet has been busy expanding FoodPanda, its online food delivery service, into Vietnam, reported techblog Action.vn.