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In the Philippines, where as much as 70 per cent of the population is “bankless”, the ASX-listed fintech company is solving this problem with the introduction of an innovative mobile payments platform.
After successfully deploying its mobile payments technology with three of the largest banks in the Philippines – Metropolitan Bank & Trust, UnionBank of the Philippines and UCPB Bank – Peppermint identified a new challenge – to offer the same services to people who don’t have a bank account.
The answer was to partner with large existing agent networks, whose members could take Peppermint’s mobile services to people in their communities to allow them to transfer or “remit” money from one person to another, pay bills and Peppermint makes progress in Asia with mobile payment app purchase eload (mobile airtime).
While the Philippines is the third largest cross-border international remittance market globally (with approximately US$28 billion in international remittances flowing into the country in 2015 according to the World Bank) the market for money remitted between people in the country (domestic remittance) is almost twice that size.
Peppermint Innovation Managing Director Chris Kain said the company was poised to grow its revenue position from both of its Philippines business operations – the mobile platform for banked and unbanked customers – as well as expansion into new markets.
“UnionBank is seeking to dramatically increase the number of its account holders using our platform from 50,000 to 2.5 million. This alone will result in a significant boost to the company’s revenue position,” Mr Kain said.
Mr Kain said the opportunity for revenue from Peppermint’s mobile platform for the unbanked was greater again.
“While the vast majority of Filipinos own a mobile device, around 70 per cent of the population don’t have a bank account,” Mr Kain said. “Our technology allows us to offer this large population access to a fast, safe and reliable mobile payment platform.”
This is now well underway with Peppermint’s first local partner MyWeps International Inc., and the 1Bro Global agent network for which it has developed a mobile payments and remittances app called MyWeps Remittance (powered by Peppermint).
On the back of its progress in the Philippines, Peppermint is also starting to take steps to roll out its business in Bangladesh (the seventh largest remittance receiving country globally worth an estimated US$15 billion in 2015 according to the World Bank) and other major remittance corridors in Asia.
Mr Kain said Peppermint had recently appointed former Westpac and ANZ executive Rod Tasker to its board to help lead these operations from Australia and was seeking to develop relationships with established players in these markets to gain access to regulatory bodies and banks in target countries.
Ultimately, Peppermint hopes its innovative fintech platform will provide a mobile payments solution across the entire region.
