Peppermint signs deal with ECPay, dramatically expands services to 13,000+ outlets across the Philippines

The agreement with ECPay follows two other recent cash-in service deals with Cebuana Lhuillier and the Bank of the Philippine Islands.

Fintech company Peppermint Innovation (ASX:PIL) continues to make inroads into the Philippines, signing a cash deposit acceptance agreement with ECPay that will dramatically expand the cash-in services for its 55,000 bizmoto agents nationwide.

Electronic Commerce Payments or ECpay, is the biggest third-party electronic payment service provider in the Philippines, with access to more than 13,000+ partner outlets for cash-in services.

The deal will allow bizmoto agents to not only physically cash-in money, but also enable them to instantly top up mobile wallets at any one of ECPay’s partner outlets nationwide.

“By providing bizmoto agents convenient and accessible cash-in options, we aim to drive transactions across the bizmoto platform and utilisation of the bizmoto ecosystem,” says Peppermint’s CEO, Chris Kain.

Expanding cash-in and top-up services

ECPay has more than 13,000 partner outlets and stores across the Philippines, including major retail chains such as 7-Eleven, San Mig Food Avenue, Prince Warehouse, LCC Malls, NCCC Supermarkets, RD Pawnshop, H Lhullier and Global Access.

Under the terms, the bizmoto platform will be available and branded via 7-Eleven in-store CLiQQ kiosks that will assist agents with the process of cashing-in and topping-up their wallets.

“These 7-Eleven stores are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and there are more than a thousand 7-Eleven stores located in metropolitan Manila alone and over 2,600 across the Philippines,” Kain explained.

“So the opportunity to cash-in and top-up is quick and easily accessible.”

Following this agreement, a bizmoto agent can now go into any ECPay store or partner outlet, and elect to pay bizmoto to top-up their mobile wallet.

The agent’s cash-in funds will then be instantly credited to their bizmoto wallet.

“Any bizmoto agent located from Luzon to Visayas and down to Mindanao can now physically go to an ECPay point in any one of 80+ provinces in the Philippines to cash-in and top-up their mobile wallet,” Kain said.

Currently, bizmoto agents can cash-in a minimum of 300 pesos and up to a maximum of 10,000 pesos per transaction.

Peppermint does not earn direct revenue from the ECPay agreement, but will earn a system fee for every transaction that is made across the bizmoto platform.

The system fee is not set and varies from a flat fee basis to a percentage of the transaction value.

At present, Peppermint earns up to 6% of the transaction value on most transactions across the bizmoto platform.

The agreement is for an initial two-year period, with a target go-live date in Q3 of 2021.

Recent partnerships

The ECPay deal today follows two recent cash-in service agreements signed with Cebuana Lhuillier and the Bank of the Philippine Islands.

Back in April, Peppermint signed a deal with Cebuana Lhuillier, a Philippines-based store network that provides a range of micro-finance services.

Cebuana is the country’s largest microfinance provider, with four million micro savings account holders and 20,000 domestic partners with key business channels in pawning, remittance, micro-insurance and micro-savings.

Under the terms of the deal, registered agents on PIL’s bizmoto network will be able to cash in money and top up their mobile wallets at any of the 2,500 Cebuana shop fronts and accredited stores across the country.

That agreement followed another crucial deal in March with the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), the oldest bank in the Philippines with 170 years of continuous service.

The BIP has a total customer base of around 8.8 million clients, and operates in a number of core banking markets such as lending, asset management and foreign exchange.

Under the agreement, existing bizmoto agents will be able to seamlessly top-up their mobile wallet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year via online access to a BPI account.

Most recently, Peppermint struck an agreement with GCash, enabling its bizmoto merchants, bizmoto agents and bizmoGo riders to accept payments directly from GCash mobile wallet holders.

That deal has significantly opened up bizmoto’s visibility and market reach, as nearly one in three Filipinos, or around 40 million people, currently hold the GCash mobile wallet.

Delivering on quarterly metrics

Peppermint has had a very productive last quarter, after being reinstated to the ASX back in February.

The relisting follows the company’s heavily oversubscribed capital raise, which managed to bring in a total of $2.5 million.

During the quarter, it was able to achieve critical milestones on all its verticals despite the COVID-19 difficulties faced in the Philippines.

Speaking to Stockhead recently, Kain said the key achievement for the quarter was the finalisation of its lodgement to the Philippines SEC for a financial licence for Peppermint, which will underpin its bizmoPay microfinance operations.

Kain said today that Peppermint’s long term strategy is to integrate its platform into the Philippines payment industry.

“Our goal has always been to integrate our bizmoto platform into the established Philippines payments industry, and the ECPay agreement is a massive ‘brick in the road’ as we build out our bizmoto ecosystem.”

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.