Perth financial technology company Peppermint Innovation may have discovered a lucrative new route to market for their interesting mobile bill payment technology.
The company recently appointed Metro Gas Sales inc, a domestic gas bottle delivery company in the Philippines with over 60,000 household customers as a Peppermint agent.
Peppermint’s technology is aimed at the millions of people in the Philippines and elsewhere that are technically known as “unbanked” and do not operate a bank account.
They get paid in cash from their employer and they pay their household bills direct to the relevant utility in cash.
They do however suffer great inconvenience as they generally have to physically attend at a utility’s business premises to pay their household and personal bills in cash.
Peppermint’s technology manifests itself in the form of a mobile APP that is connected to a myriad of billers and agents are being appointed around the Philippines to accept money from the unbanked community for the purposes of paying their household bills.
Both Peppermint and the agent share in a fee that is generated from every transaction.
Metro Gas have 50 delivery drivers that drop LPG gas bottles to between 15 and 20 customers a day, 7 days a week.
Under the terms of the deal each driver will be set up as a Peppermint agent and equipped with the mobile bill paying APP.
Metro Gas delivery drivers will then offer their gas delivery customers, many of whom are still unbanked, with the opportunity to pay their other household bills via the Peppermint APP.
Metro Gas and Peppermint will share in the fees generated.
Peppermint already have an agreement in place with the largest bill aggregator in the Philippines, Bayad Centre, with the aim of allowing customers to pay bills for over 200 billers via their APP, 48 of which have already been on-boarded or are about to be.
Commenting on the agreement, Peppermint Managing Director & CEO, Chris Kain said: “This is an exciting development for Peppermint as we continue to look for additional applications of our proprietary technology. We continue to discover more untapped networks, which could act as payment Agents using our purpose built Mobile Payments Platform.”
General Manager of Metro Gas Sales Inc., Dennis San Juan said “This agreement with Peppermint provides a valuable extension of Metro Gas’ services, providing our customers with a new benefit and the convenience of paying bills from their own homes. We’re looking forward to launching this new offering to our customers as quickly as possible.”
If Peppermint can successfully implement this deal they will show that their potential agent network has no boundaries.
It will mean that any existing network of agents, sales reps, network marketers and others could possibly be tapped to become Peppermint agents and the company’s pathway to market will be significantly enhanced.
