By Cris Larano
MANILA--Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (TEL.PH) said
Tuesday it formed a joint venture with its Frankfurt-listed
affiliate Rocket Internet AG for an online and mobile payment
services firm that will focus on emerging markets.
PLDT will contribute to the joint venture its mobile-first
payment platform Smart e-Money Inc., a mobile banking and mobile
wallet services, while Rocket will contribute its participation in
Paymill Holding GmbH and Payleven Holding GmbH, two payment
platforms for small and medium-sized e-commerce business in Europe.
Smart e-Money has more than 5 million customers and 300,000 trade
accounts, and handled around $4 billion in transactions in
2013.
PLDT will own 50% of the joint venture. The deal is expected to
close within the first quarter.
PLDT spokesman Ramon Isberto said the target of the joint
venture is emerging markets in Latin America and Africa as well as
India where Rocket already has a presence, but its growth is
hampered by the absence of a platform that allows the so-called
"uncarded and unbanked" to participate in online transactions.
He pointed out that Smart e-Money has been in existence for more
than a decade and has been providing banking services to customers
with mobile phones but no bank accounts since 2000. "But we had no
means to bring this services to other markets until Rocket came
along," he added.
A McKinsey & Co. report in 2012 has cited Smart e-Money
among the handful of mobile-money deployments in the world to have
reached sustainable scale our of the more than 100.
According to the 2013 report of global group GSM Association,
there were more than 203 million registered mobile money accounts
worldwide as of June that year, with 98 million in Sub-Saharan
Africa. Only a third of all those accounts, however, had been used
between in June, when total global transactions reached an
estimated $7.4 billion.
Write to Cris Larano at cris.larano@dowjones.com;
@CrisLaranoWSJ
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