Malaysia-headquartered private equity firm Navis Capital Partners has agreed to sell Southeast Asian smart card manufacturer dzcard Group to Japan’s Toppan Security.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Navis Capital said the transaction is expected to close by August 2025.
Headquartered in Bangkok, dzcard operates card manufacturing and personalisation facilities in Thailand and Tanzania, with service hubs in India, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Morocco.
The company produces over 100 million financial cards and 60 million non-financial cards annually for more than 115 banks, fintechs, and telcos across Southeast Asia, India, and Africa.
Navis acquired dzcard in 2018. Since then, it has supported the firm’s expansion into digital technologies and new markets across the region and the African continent.
The buyout firm executed a “buy-and-build” strategy that helped transform dzcard from a regional player into a fully integrated provider of secure card solutions, per the announcement.
Today, dzcard supplies and services over 100 million financial cards annually to over 115 banks and fintech firms, as well as over 60 million non-financial cards annually.
“dzcard has developed from a small Danish printing house for chequebooks and bank passbooks in 1971 to a regional champion in highly secure complex financial and non-financial card production, personalisation and fulfilment,” said Nicholas Bloy, managing partner at Navis.
The deal followed the close of Navis Capital’s new continuation vehicle at $230 million in April. Dubbed Navis Next Generation Fund, the vehicle “enables Navis Asia Fund VIII to crystallise attractive returns on the portion of the portfolio sold while retaining very meaningful exposure to the future upside of the assets”, the firm earlier said.
Navis is raising its ninth flagship buyout fund, targeting a corpus of $1 billion. The firm is also aiming to raise $350 million for its inaugural debt fund. It currently manages over $5 billion in private equity and private credit capital.
In March, Navis scored an exit from Everrise, selling the Malaysian supermarket chain to Grab. Last year, it exited the education firm SEGi to the business’s management.
