British Co Paypoint Eyes Installing An Additional 900 Terminals In Romania

The company registered 5,700 terminals end-March, compared with 4,000 terminals at the end of the 2007-2008 fiscal year, and it will expand its network to provide further national coverage and develop its bill payment service.

In Romania, the company plans to install a further 900 PayPoint terminals, which will complement the existing terminal base and provide further national coverage for the company’s bill payment network. The company also expects losses in Romania in the first half of the year but the business should be trading profitably by the end of the 2009-2010 financial year.

"In Romania, we plan to install a further 900 PayPoint terminals. These will complement the existing terminal base and provide further national coverage for our bill payment network. We expect losses in Romania in the first half of the year but the business should be trading profitably by the end of the financial year,” David Newlands, Chairman of PayPoint, said in a report presented Tursday.

The company said it completed the transfer of transaction processing to its operations centre in the UK, which has allowed the company to offer, for the first time, mobile top-ups for Cosmote, the third largest mobile operator in Romania.

Bill payment was launched in August 2008, initially with four clients, including Romania’s national telecoms provider Romtelecom and Distrigaz, one of the two leading gas suppliers.

The company now has 14 clients contracted and 2,000 PayPoint bill payment branded terminals installed. Bill pay volumes are growing and the company already processed over 1 million bill payment transactions since going live, reaching a current run rate of nealry 50,000 transactions per week.

The company ended the 2008-2009 financial year with a pretax profit of GBP35 million, up 20% compared with GBP30 million in the previous financial year. Global revenue for the financial year was 7% higher on a like-for-like basis at GBP224 million, compared with GBP212 million in 2008, driven by a 10% like-for-like increase in transaction volumes and the increase in revenue from the sale of mobile top-ups in Romania.

The mobile sector in the UK, Romania and Ireland has seen a reduction in transaction volumes as consumers reduce their spending and networks offer consumers more airtime for their money.

"Romanian mobile top-ups have decreased 2% on last year, lower than the contraction in the overall market size as we have continued to roll out new terminals and gain market share,” the report also read.