Peppermint pours on the partnerships in massive six months, grows fintech fortress across the Philippines

It’s been a huge and productive half for Philippines-focused fintech Peppermint, launching the bizmoPay loans offering and proceeding to the last stage of its electronic money issuer licence application.

Aussie-listed Fintech Peppermint Innovation (ASX:PIL) has just delivered a half of key milestones for shareholders, launching its long-awaited alternative non-bank micro-enterprise loan offering, bizmoPay.

The achievement followed the granting of a key financial licence by the Philippines Securities Exchange (PSX) allowing Peppermint to bring its platform to any of bizmoto’s more than 50,000 agents offering instant access to the three micro-loan products via the mobile bizmoto app.

And it’s been a half of major regulatory milestones, with Peppermint also receiving a crucial notice from the Philippines regulator to proceed to Stage 3 of its Electronic Money Issuer (EMI) Licence application. The company has since provided a comprehensive system demonstration to the Bangko Ng Philipinas (BSP) and now await the outcome of its licence application.

An EMI licence will allow Peppermint to facilitate any e-money transaction in the Philippines, effectively turbocharging its capabilities in the digital transaction space, particularly when combined with the loans it’s already able to make through bizmoPay.

Money well spent

To progress the EMI licence application, Peppermint successfully raised $5m in November, with a placement to sophisticated and professional investors at 2c a share.

Funds from the placement will mainly be used to satisfy the PSX’s stipulated paid-up capital requirements of Php 100m (~A$3m), a key criteria of the fintech’s final stage EMI licence application.

Cashed up and the heavy lifting is behind

For the half, Peppermint reported $935k in revenue and a net loss of $1.65m, with the company growing strongly into its unique market.

Peppermint is extremely well funded and continues along its path toward profitability with a clear strategic mindset. The company closed out the half in a strong cash position with $6.9m in the bank.

With that cash balance, the company says it’s set to continue along its growth trajectory and satisfy all associated working capital requirements.

New exciting platforms to go live

The non-bank lending space in the Philippines is currently undergoing massive changes, especially in the mobile app space where users uptake has exploded as more people access non-bank loan finance through their mobiles.

About 86% of the population use their mobile phones to access the internet, giving immediate demand for mobile phone app-based lenders and lending programs.

But that number doesn’t appropriately describe the innovative, intimate and comfortable relationship most Filipinos have with their devices.

Capitalizing on that profound digital culture is how Peppermint is continuing to build out its foothold in the country, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

Over the half, Peppermint has also established several key partnerships to fast-track its growth.

Dragonpay and PayMaya

The company’s engagement with Dragonpay, a payment gateway it signed a deal with last October, provides bizmoPay users with immediate access to a massive network of banks, EMI-wallet providers and remittance centres to undertake fund transfers and payments.

Essentially, Dragonpay is an aggregator of cash-in, fund transfers and payments services and will be a major enabler for bizmoto agents, riders and merchants to conduct their transactions.

Functionality for Dragonpay on both Android and iOS platforms went live in the bizmoto App earlier this week – several weeks ahead of its scheduled Q2 2022 delivery date.

In addition, Peppermint is working to finalise the integration of its other ‘cash-in’ offerings, with functionality for the Bank of Philippines (BPI), Cebuana Lhuiller and ECPay all expected to go live by the end of Q1/2 2022.

The integration of GCash as a payments’ facilitator into the bizmoto App is expected to also go live by the end of Q2 2022.In February, Peppermint also signed a bill payment deal with PayMaya Philippines to make it easier for their bizmoto agents to top up or cash in to their bizmoto mobile wallets.

PayMaya has 26 million registered users throughout the Philippines and a network of 55,000 ‘Smart Padala’ agents that serve as last-mile financial hubs in communities across the country.

This article was developed in collaboration with Peppermint, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.