report on mnw | january 13, 2014

http://www.rustreport.com.au/issues/latestissue/alex-teoh-ceo-mint-wireless/


Please provide a brief overview of the company.

The company was founded in 2006 and we are Australia’s first and only non-bank mobile payments solution to offer a modular, scalable and PCI-compliant bank grade platform to businesses of any size from micro traders to large enterprises who wish to accept mobile payments. Mint Wireless has built a proven and tested mobile payments platform that can be deployed in Australia and Europe as we have bank accreditations with Bendigo Bank in Australia, Barclay Card as well as RBS/WorldPay in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. We have 35 employees located in Australia, United Kingdom and

What sets the company apart from your competitors?

Mobile payments have generally been viewed as a complex and costly infrastructure to implement. However, we have launched a platform that offers a more competitive pricing structure, reduced initial setup and hardware costs associated with accepting card payments on mobile devices.

Instead of offering siloed solutions, we have invested heavily in developing one single platform that is the basis for all of our core offerings: Mintegrate, the Mint Developers Program which provides free SDKs and APIs to integration and developers that support Windows, iOS, and Android mobile devices; Minterprise, which provides white label as well as custom payments solution for enterprises and Mint mPOS, Australia’s first card-present payment solution for iOS and Android devices that takes payments using a small hardware device. Singapore.

Who are typical prospects/customers?

Mint Wireless built our company’s heritage delivering mobile payments solutions to companies such as Cadbury Schweppes which was our first corporate customer in Australia; easyJet, United Kingdom’s largest airline and Amalgamated Pest Control, Australia’s largest privately owned pest control company. This year we have extended our offering to distribution partners such as MYOB and the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) who will be offering integrated mobile payment solutions to their customer base.

We will continue to pursue enterprise and distribution customers from banks, telcos, airlines, manufacturers, retailers to ERP software companies. In addition we will put greater emphasis on targeting developers who support mobile payments integrations as we rollout the Mint Developers Program at the end of 2013.

When talking to customers/prospects what things are top of their agenda’s today?

There are two main issues our solution solves, the lack of mobility and the inability for traditional payment solutions to integrate with existing software solutions such as point-of-sales, field service or accounting software.

Most companies are after the ability to integrate their payment solution, whether mobile or not, with existing software solutions they are using in order to reduce admin work such as reconciling payments at the end of the day and creating invoices.

Mint has tackled this problem by providing a simple but powerful mobile payments platform that makes the integration as well as maintenance of such integration easy, quick and cost effective.

What is the Company’s greatest challenge right now?

Mint is currently in a great position to capitalise on the current growth of mobile payments not only in Australia but also in other countries. Currently, one of the biggest challenges for Mint is to identify and prioritise opportunities in the marketplace. Mint is also aiming to increasing both compatible hardware and our links to different banks.

What are the company’s greatest opportunities right now?

The market is steadily showing an increase in the adoption of mobile payment solutions. In the United States, the mobile payments and transaction technology market continues to light up with new competitors and a growing legion of merchants who have taken to mobile payments over the last 12 months. Gartner has also made an upbeat forecast where it expects the global mobile payments market to grow by 44 percent by the end of 2013. We feel that Australia has significant growth potential for mobile payments and we estimate the value of mPOS transactions here will reach US$7 billion in 2014 with the potential to grow to US$20 billion in 2016.

What are the core messages you want the marketplace to know about your company?

Australia has proven to be a rather difficult market to penetrate with restrictive rules and regulations that govern the commercialisation of payment solutions. Mint Wireless has also had to negotiate the stronghold of the EFTPOS network before we could launch a fully functional mobile payments platform in Australia providing card acceptance for all cards. We are now in a position to take full advantage of our efforts that we have invested in the last two years to introduce a bank-grade mobile payments platform that meets regulatory requirements and the market expectations.