Mi-Pay Group PLC (LON:MPAY) Chief Executive Officer Michael Dickerson caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their final results for the 12 months ended 31 December 2016
Q1: I see that your final results this morning, Michael, can you talk us through the highlights?
A1: Yes, certainly. So, if you look at last year, we have continued to see the migration, the natural migration from install to digital and as a consequence of that, we have been able to grow the payments delivered through the Mi-Pay system by 29%. That has actually been driven primarily by 80% of our top ten clients increasing their overall business with Mi-Pay. In addition to this, we have also introduced new payment channels where we have delivered Amazon payments to the mobile community in a mobile solution to the operators and we’ve also, at the same time, continued to enhance our payment security where we, in fact, we have seen a 33% reduction in the fraud rates comparable to the year before. That has allowed us to actually increase our success rate, to the benefit of both us and our clients, which is up by 2% to 88% of payment success rate which we believe is industry best.
Q2: Now the mobile payments market seems to be evolving at quite a rapid pace, how is Mi-Pay Group able to keep up with the market?
A2: I think that we are keeping up with the market by being very alert to the requirements that comes out of new payment requirements from end-users so for Amazon payments or 1-click type payments are something that we need to be very alert to and we’ve also focussed highly on the cyber security. So, payment and cyber security you’ll see in examples here within Europe but also in the UK where there’s been breach of data, we see this as an ongoing opportunity for us to deliver a safe and secure solution to our big clients that actually allows them to focus on their core business.
Q3: Now, you’re seeing much improved operational efficiencies, can you tell us about how you’ve achieved this?
A3: We have achieved this by first of all, insourcing our thought engine and enhancing on that. We’ve also had an opportunity to optimise our internal processes and as a consequence of that, we have seen a much more efficient way of delivering services to our end-users. Again, as a consequence of these enhanced internal solutions, we have also been awarded the IBM global award winner for ‘Outstanding Solutions Hosted on IBM Cloud’ last year.
Q4: So, how is 2017 shaping up for Mi-Pay Group PLC? What does the rest of the year look like?
A4: This looks like, I would say, almost business as usual, it’s continued migration over to digital. You see a global trend which is a push towards data so more and more data is being consumed by mobile users and as a consequence of that, we’re actually seeing, to our benefit now, the business model also, an increase of the average transaction value. Our business model, if you may recall, is a percentage of the top up value but unlike a traditional PSP, we only charge for successful transactions, that means we only make money, basically, when our clients do. We’ve actually seen, as a consequence of the data migration, a 9% increase in the average top up value here in the UK and that is something that basically creates more profitability both for us and our clients.
Looking forward into 2017, we expect that continued transaction growth, also in fact have the opportunity to accelerate due to a high alertness from mobile operators to more complete solutions. We also see that we’re able to continue to have an optimised growth profits because of the insource of end management of our own solutions rather than having been reliant on a third-party solutions as we’ve had in the past. So, looking to 2017, we continue to see to progression towards profitability in line with expectations that we’ve communicated to the market at an earlier stage.
