PayPoint plc : PayPoint reveals plans for multi...

Press release                                    

PAYPOINT REVEALS PLANS FOR MULTI-CHANNEL FUTURE WITH MERGED 

MOBILE AND ONLINE BUSINESS AND NEW GROUP BRAND

London, 20 May 2014: PayPoint has announced three important developments to reinforce its position as a market leader in multi-channel payments. 

Launch of PayPoint Mobile and Online

PayPoint has merged its internet payment service provider and mobile phone payment businesses, previously trading as PayPoint.net and PayByPhone. The new business, known as PayPoint Mobile and Online, combines PayPoint's depth of expertise in online payments with PayByPhone's consumer insight gained as one of the world's most successful mobile payments schemes. PayPoint Mobile and Online provides solutions that cover the entire end-to-end transaction, from engaging the consumer to processing the payment.   

With offices in London, Bath, Welwyn Garden City, Paris, New York, and Vancouver, the new business already has 7 million customer registrations for its mobile services and handles almost £5 billion in consumer payments annually.   

Dan Salmons, Managing Director, PayPoint Mobile and Online, said: "Customers want to pay by mobile or online with a convenient, simple, seamless experience.  As a result, many organisations are suddenly finding they need more sophisticated payment solutions that can keep up with the rapid changes in technology, consumer behaviour and regulation.

"By combining our unrivalled expertise in mobile and online payments, we can manage payments from app to bank, making it simple for organisations to resolve their payment needs. Our modular platform means we can rapidly develop a wide range of solutions from home energy to urban mobility, online gaming to financial services.  We believe we are that rare thing: a payments company that gets consumers, and a mobile company that gets payments."   

New multi-channel payment proposition

PayPoint Mobile and Online will also be instrumental to PayPoint Group's move to develop a series of multi-channel payment propositions. PayPoint already enables retail cash payments through its 36,000-strong retail network across the UK, Ireland and Romania.  By combining these retail networks with the new Mobile and Online business, PayPoint will enable organisations to give their customers a seamless choice of when, where and how to consume and pay for services, whether via mobile, online, or retail channels.

One of the first applications of the new integrated capability will be Smart Metering, enabling energy providers for the first time to give their customers a seamless choice of paying in cash, or via mobile or online channels.

Research commissioned by PayPoint shows that consumers are increasingly demanding a choice of payment methods.  The research, carried out by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr), found that non-card non-cash payments (which include mobile payments) are set to grow from 9.3 per cent of all retail transactions today to 19.6 per cent by 2019, and that retailers could gain by accepting payment methods which their customers prefer, rather than restricting payment methods.   

The study finds that preference for mobile commerce is strongest among younger consumers, but it is not their sole preserve.  A third of people aged 18-30 have bought goods and services via their mobiles in response to offers or advertisements, while a fifth of consumers aged over 55 agreed they would make purchases via their mobiles.  

Scott Corfe, managing economist at Cebr, commented: "Organisations can no longer afford to restrict the payment options available to consumers. Our research has found that people of all ages and backgrounds want fast, simple payments, and will vote with their feet when their expectations are not met."

New brand

PayPoint also announced a refreshed, dynamic brand identity for the group to reflect the new multi-channel positioning. All the group's businesses will adopt a new logo, which has been designed to work effectively across all channels, modernising its identity from its traditional retail heritage. In time, the new logo will extend to consumer facing services, initially through a new PayByPhone mobile app later this year. There are no immediate plans to change the signage on its retail outlets.

Speaking at the launch event in London, Dominic Taylor, Chief Executive, PayPoint plc, said: "Consumers want convenience, whether it is flexibility to choose how to pay, or simplicity in how their apps work.  We aim to ensure that our clients can extend these new choices to their customers without having to rebuild their platforms or educate people how to use them, We are uniquely placed to provide the full multi-channel consumer service and payment experience."

Ends

Peter Brooker
Head of Corporate Affairs
PayPoint
01707 600356 / 07900 418960
[e-mail]   

PayPoint Press Office
Sarah Musselbrook / Patrick Yiu
Brands2Life
020 7592 1200 
[e-mail]

ABOUT THE RESEARCH
Cebr analysed data from the British Retail Council on payments, combining this with Cebr's in-house economic models to forecast future trends in payments.  Information on consumer preferences regarding payments came from two surveys undertaken by YouGov in the UK (2,000 respondents aged over 18) and the US (1,000 respondents aged over 18). The data was segmented by region, age and other demographic characteristics. We were able to combine this with economic data from the BRC and from the Office for National Statistics to find out the scale of potential gains for organisations.  

ABOUT PAYPOINT
PayPoint is a leading international provider of convenient payments and value added services to major consumer service organisations in the utility, housing, water, telecoms, media, financial services, transport, retail, e-commerce, gaming and public sectors.

PayPoint delivers payments and services through a uniquely strong combination of local shops, internet and mobile distribution channels and handles over £14 billion from almost 740 million transactions annually for more than 6,000 clients and merchants.

PayPoint is widely recognised for its leadership in payment systems, smart technology and consumer service.

Retail networks
The PayPoint branded retail network across the UK numbers over 26,100 local shops (including Co-op, Spar, McColls, Costcutter, Sainsbury's Local, Tesco Express, One Stop, Asda, Londis and thousands of independents), where it processes energy meter pre-payments, cash bill payments, mobile phone top-ups, transport tickets, BBC TV licences, cash withdrawals and a wide variety of other payment types. 

In Romania, the branded retail network numbers over 8,100 terminals located in local shops, processing cash bill payments for utilities, money transfers and mobile phone top-ups. In the Republic of Ireland, over 500 terminals in shops and credit unions process mobile top-ups and bill payments.

Collect+, a joint venture with Yodel, provides a parcel collection and drop off service at more than 5,600 PayPoint retailers. PayPoint's ATM network numbers more than 3,400 'LINK' branded machines across the UK, mainly in the same sites as PayPoint terminals.

Mobile and Online
PayPoint Mobile and Online (formerly trading as PayByPhone and PayPoint.net) handles over 110 million payments annually across both mobile and web channels.

The business has three main business lines: payments, parking and consumer services.   The payments platform is linked into 16 major acquiring banks in the UK, Europe and North America, delivering secure credit and debit card payments for over 5,100 web merchants, and offers a comprehensive set of products and services ranging from a bureau service to a transaction gateway, real-time reporting for merchant transactions, and FraudGuard, an advanced service to mitigate the risk of fraud for card not present transactions.

The parking business provides an essential service to enable consumers to pay for parking on a mobile, increasingly using an app, and has parking contracts in the UK, Canada, USA, France, Switzerland and Australia.   Mobile parking services also include electronic parking permits, automatic number plate recognition systems for car parks and penalty charge notices.  Consumer services offers mobile and online services beyond parking to consumers registered for the parking business, including payment for electric vehicles, bicycles, taxis and buses.

PayPoint Rebrand

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Source: PayPoint plc via Globenewswire

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