Monitise Gets Major Investment For Mobile Money Expansion

Mike Moore,
mobile payments, fintech

Santander, Telefónica and Mastercard contribute to £49.2m investment, as Monitise also announces further IBM collaboration

Mobile money specialist Monitise has received a £49.2m investment from Santander, Telefonica and Mastercard in a major show of support for its expansion into new markets.

The deal will see Monitise work with Santander to build new mobile money capabilities for the bank, and collaborate with Telefónica to develop new products and services ahead of a major Latin America push in 2015.

Monitise will work with Mastercard on a variety of digital payments projects, including cross-border mobile remittance capabilities, mobile transfer solutions and cloud-based payments services for global businesses, all of which will gradually become customisable parts of the Monitise platform in the future.

As part of their investment, Telefónica and Santander will also have the right, acting jointly, to nominate one Non-Executive Director to the Monitise board.

Mobile payments, money, smartphone © Slavoljub Pantelic Shutterstock 2012Expansion

The company, which has around 30 million registered users worldwide, also announced a further tie-up with IBM. The two have a history of collaboration, with the latest deal seeing IBM contributing additional technology services and resources to augment the Monitise platform, most notably Watson, IBM’s cognitive computing and machine-learning technology.

The company also today reiterated its aim to be EBITDA profitable in its 2016 year, as well as reiterating longer-term guidance for 2018 of 200m registered users at £2.50 average revenue per user, an EBITDA margin of at least 30 percent and a sustainable gross margin above 70 percent.

“The Mobile Money industry is now a global phenomenon, said Monitise co-CEO Alastair Lukies. “In developed markets it is fundamentally changing the way we bank, pay and buy. In emerging markets it is the foundation of new economic systems.”

“With our partners, we are delighted to be playing our role as an enabler to the Mobile Money collaborators. Via deepening partnerships, our increasingly connected mobile commerce services can become even smarter and more engaging for the businesses we work with.”

Mobile money payments are set to become a major growth sector over the next few years as more and more consumers begin using their devices to complete transactions. A study by Juniper Research found that more than 1.6 billion payments across the world were completed using a smartphone or tablet this year, thanks to a surge in consumers using the devices for banking, money transfer and online shopping services. This figure is set to continue growing over the next few years as consumer use continues to rise, before topping the two billion transactions a year mark by 2017.

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