Peppermint signs agreement with Philippines’ electronic payment service provider, ECPay
ASX-listed Peppermint Innovation Limited announced it had signed a Memorandum of Agreement with Electronic Commerce Payments, Inc. (“ECPay”), a leading electronic payment service provider in the Philippines.
Under the agreement, customers can use Peppermint’s Bizmoto website (www.bizmoto.com.au) to directly pay a variety of bills for their family and friends living in the Philippines, such as power and water, mobile phones and the internet. They can also directly top-up credit cards and debit cards for their family and friends, as well as paying insurance premiums or loan and finance repayments.
The direct payment of bills and purchase of e-Loads is viewed favourably by some payees who are reluctant to transfer cash amounts because they fear the money can be squandered and bills remain unpaid or e-Loads go unpurchased.
As part of the agreement between ECPay and Peppermint, the direct bill payment and e- Load services are facilitated by ECPay on behalf of Peppermint’s customers, with all payments facilitated by Bizmoto direct to ECPay.
Monies must be deposited into Peppermint’s digital wallet prior to any transaction being processed and all payments are made by ECPay to legitimate billers within a 48-hour period.
ECPay charge Bizmoto a service fee for all direct bill payments and e-Loads while Bizmoto earn revenue from every customer transaction that is processed.
Peppermint Innovation Limited Managing Director and CEO Chris Kain said: “Our agreement with ECPay further strengthens our Bizmoto service offering here in Australia, providing customers with a seamless process to make direct bill payments or purchase e- Loads on behalf of family and friends in the Philippines.
“Some Bizmoto customers have said they want peace of mind knowing the monies they have transferred go directly to the intended biller. The ECPay arrangement delivers on that request.
“We look forward to working closely with ECPay with a view to developing other revenue-generating opportunities for our Bizmoto agent base that potentially leverages off ECPay’s bricks and mortar outlets.”
Peppermint is building Bizmoto to provide global money remittance services, starting with remittances between Australia and the Philippines where in 2017 it was an estimated USD$1 billion were transferred between the two countries*.
According to World Bank figures in 2016, people living abroad sent an estimated US$574 billion back to their home countries~, while during the same year US$16.184 billion in remittances was sent from Australia to other countries around the world+.
These figures are predicted to increase substantially with the World Bank forecasting global remittances will top US$616 billion in 2018^ and increase to approximately US$640 billion in 2019^.
The agreement with ECPay comes just five weeks after Peppermint signed a partnership agreement with Direct Agent 5, Inc – one of the Philippines leading non-bank remittance payout providers.
The DA5 agreement allows Bizmoto to use DA5’s 1000+ locations in the Philippines as trusted remittance payout providers for its customers, while allowing DA5 to use Bizmoto’s online remittance platform to payout money transfers to Australia.
*The World Bank, Bilateral Remittance Matrix 2017, released in April 2018
(http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/migrationremittancesdiasporaissues/brief/migration-remittances-data)
^Source: World Bank, Migration and Development Brief 28: 1. Trends in Global Remittance Flows, October 2017
~Source: Pew Research Center analysis of World Bank and CIA World Factbook data, accessed on 25 January, 2018.
+Source: World Bank 2016 Bilateral Remittance Matrix, accessed 6 December, 2017.
