Mint piles on the expenses in pursuit of growth

Mobile payments company Mint Payments has pulled off the feat of almost doubling revenue for the year to June, while increasing its loss by more than ten per cent.

The company's financial report shows a 79 per cent increase in revenue to A$3.8 million and losses growing from $6.4 million in 2013/14 to $7.2 million in the year to June.

The reason for this apparent anomaly is that the company ploughed the proceeds of a $10 million capital raising last year into the recruitment of extra sales, marketing and development staff.

The company said this was warranted, given what it saw as a growing number of sales opportunities and product development initiatives.

Expenses blew out from $8.5 million in 2013/14 to $11.1 million in the year to June. The biggest item was the employee benefits expense, which grew from $2.9 million to $6.1 million.

The company said it was getting some good results. It processed $40 million of payments by 4500 active users in the year to June, compared with $16 million of payments by 1800 active users in 2013/14.

Its main distribution partners are MYOB, which uses Mint to support its PayDirect offering, and BNZ, which launched a product called PayClip (using Mint technology) in May.

During the year it entered into distribution agreements with Beyond Bank, Rewardle Holdings, Tappr, AusCabs and eWay.

In April it launched a product called Minternet, which marked its entry into the card-not-present payments segment.