Mint Wireless targets apps developers
After signing two big white-label distribution deals last year, mobile payments specialist Mint Wireless will look to its growth this year by helping software developers to integrate card payment functions into their mobile applications.Mint Wireless, which sells mobile point-of-sale terminals and supporting infrastructure, is yet to make a profit since listing on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2007.In the year to June last year, it made a loss of A$3.3 million, on revenue of $960,000. The previous year it made a loss of $4.6 million.However, things started to look up last year when it entered into an agreement with BNZ to provide BNZ's PayClip mobile payments service. It also signed a deal with the business management software company MYOB that will allow MYOB to integrate Mint Wireless's mobile payments technology with its software products.Mint Wireless's chief executive, Alex Teoh, said the Australian market had been slow to adopt mPOS (mobile point-of-sale) technology, compared with other markets.The company has forecast that there will be $7 billion of mPOS payments this year, rising to $20 billion in 2017. Mint Wireless charges merchants between 1.9 per cent and 2.7 per cent per transaction. Teoh would not say what Mint Wireless's share of this was.Teoh said: "Our software developer program is intended for point-of-sale system developers and mobile app developers. It will allow them to integrate our platform for payments."Our aim is to allow any company that is using mobile technology to run its business [so as] to incorporate mobile payments. "We have done this sort of integration work with corporate customers. Now we are taking it to a wider market."