Mint Wireless dumps CEO

The board of mobile payment specialist Mint Wireless has dumped chief executive Robin Khuda only six months after his appointment. The board announced yesterday that it had started a strategic review of the business.

In April, Mint's co-founder Alex Teoh moved from the CEO position to the role of executive chairman. Khuda, with a background in IT and telecommunications, was appointed to replace him.

Teoh will now resume the CEO role on an interim basis, and said the board's view was that "Mr Khuda was not the person to take the company forward."

Mint is a player in the emerging mobile point of sale market. During the 2013/14 financial year it won a contract to supply the accounting software company MYOB, it entered into an agreement with BNZ to provide BNZ's PayClip mobile payments service and it signed a deal with Electrolux Home Products to develop a mobile payments solution for its service technicians.

Since listing on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2007 it has reported an unbroken string of losses, including a loss of A$6.3 million in the 2013/14 year.

The strategic review will look at the company's management and governance structures, and explore growth strategies in the mPOS market in Australia and the region.

The review is being conducted by a committee headed by independent director Anne Weatherston. A former ANZ chief information officer, Weatherston joined the Mint Wireless board last month.

In a statement to the ASX yesterday Mint Wireless said that it had 2500 active users of its latest mPOS terminal, which was upgraded last year to conform to the chip and PIN security standard.

More than $23 million of transactions have been processed in Australia and New Zealand since late last year, with monthly transaction values growing at around 20 per cent.

The company also reported that the Australian Payments Clearing Association has certified its mPOS service for use with the eftpos network (up to now it has only processed Visa and MasterCard payments).

The company said this would make its product more attractive to the small on-the-go merchants who are the core market for mPOS terminals.