Well, it has taken about 4 months longer than anticipated (at least, by this little black duck), but Peppermint has been awarded its finance licence by the Philippines Security Exchange Commission at last, and can now offer non-bank micro-enterprise loans.
This is a
major achievement by the Company, and a significant step forward for Peppermint.
To set it in context, I think it's well worth reprising CEO, Chris Kain's, March interview with Dr Nigel Finch which presaged the advent of bizmoPay. You can listen here:
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3Mud2hvb3Noa2FhLmNvbS9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC9pZC8xMDY0Nw/episode/MjBhZTdmYWItY2YwMS00ODU1LWI1MGQtMjgwZjA3YmViOGVl?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiQsI_ehofyAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQFor what it's worth, at the time I posted the following comments:
Listening to that interview carefully ones gets a sense of the measured, strategic thought that has gone into building the bizmoto ecosystem ...and how it's all coming to a head now with the key element of bizmoPay.
The Company has been aware of the 'super app' phenomenon, and analytical in its approach to tailoring its offerings to replicate bespoke elements of success stories like WeChat, Alipay, Gojek and Grab specifically for its target market, the Philippines.
It has carefully built out its ecosystem founded on four pillar elements: mobile payments, e-commerce, delivery & logistics, and mobile financial services. And it has been showing really quite strong revenue and growth metrics while doing it.
It has forged strong relationships with regulatory authorities such as the central bank of the Philippines, the BSP, acting as a member on the National Committee for Financial Inclusion.
And it knows it has a scalable business model ...and has clear, logical next-target markets: Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam...
So here's where we're at, and it's a very exciting moment in the Company's evolution:
bismoPay is the keystone to the arch - that suddenly transforms the whole edifice into something spectacularly more than the sum of its parts:
...the aim with bizmoPay is to actually turbocharge the use of the bizmoto platform as it allows our Registered Agents to effectively, if approved, access a business float ...
...So we're really excited by what this bizmoPay service can do for our platform. And how it can turbocharge the use of our platform. We're really interested to see that roll out.Naively (with hindsight),, my concluding remark was:
And bizmoPay, I think we can say, is just about to go live.Oops! ...not quite. But though the timing was evidently wildly optimistic, the import of today's news for Peppermint should not be underestimated.
(20min delay)