Paymaster to enter UK market
Published:Wednesday | February 28, 2018 | 12:00 AM
Paymaster Jamaica Limited will enter the UK market in three months, setting up what will be the first brick-and-mortar operation outside of its home market, as the company makes good on plans to build itself into a global operation.
The bill-payment company is also investing in a new switching platform that ensures billers get their money - in multiple currencies - faster, said Paymaster's head of business development, Athinia Campbell.
The cost of the expansion was not disclosed.
Paymaster is a subsidiary of Prism Financial Services, which itself is owned by Digicel Group. The telecoms acquired majority ownership of the bill-payment company from founder Ambassador Audrey Marks in 2015.
Paymaster already offers online payment to Jamaicans living abroad through its website, but is taking a more direct approach in the United Kingdom.
Campbell said the Paymaster outlets - for which the first location has not been disclosed - will be the start of a "branch network footprint in the UK". The services will be targeted at a diaspora market of Jamaicans who have payment obligations in the island, she said.
Campbell claimed that feedback from billers was good, based on the fact that several of them do not themselves offer online payment.
"Persons in the UK will be able to pay bills pertaining to Jamaica. Quite a few commercial clients are excited that we will have a presence there," she told the Financial Gleaner.
The company will also add new services in its home market, including cheque encashment for customers of local insurance companies, and is planning to grow the outlets in Jamaica beyond the 200 in the network.
Campbell said the new switching platform was "in keeping with our global outlook," but declined to comment on the level of investment, citing both company policy and a non-disclosure agreement with the vendor, whom she did not identify.
"The investment is of a significant monetary value as it involves both the back-end and the front-end [operations]," the business development manager said.
Campbell said the company already has in place back-office arrangements for updating payments faster.
"We submit files to the clients more frequently, based on their internal ability and mechanism to process multiple files in a timely manner. The payment update cycle therefore varies, based on the client biller," she said, adding that different clients are updated half-hourly or hourly, while others are supplied with payment files multiple times throughout the day.
Historically, collections from the Jamaica Public Service Company and the National Water Commission comprised most of the company's revenue, but Campbell said that is now changing.
"We have also experienced growth in the transaction volumes of our non-utility clients - aka general clients. Their growth rate has exceeded that of our utility billers. The effect of this general client transaction growth is that the category represents an increasing share of our business," she said.