Orange m-peso Launches in the Dominican Republic

FEB 06,2014

PRESS RELEASE.

The first mobile wallet was launched in the Dominican Republic by the leading prepaid telco operator (Orange) and the largest bank (Banco Popular Dominicano). M-peso is a mobile money initiative created to cater financial services to the bottom of the pyramid, which represent 72% of the Dominican population (9.4 million, 2010 census). The product was launched after 6 months of preparation and roughly 8 months after the regulators published the framework for virtual prepaid cards and branchless banking. The design, development and implementation of the turn-key solution was handled by GCS International, the same company that has created and commercialized great success the acclaimed regional products tPago® and Citi® Mobile Collect.

Orange m-peso is a prepaid mobile wallet emitted by Banco Popular Dominicano and associated to the mobile number that the customer has in active state. Through this innovation Dominicans can combine a telephone plan with a mobile wallet in a few simple steps, a first in this Caribbean nation.

GCS International has developed mobile payment products such as tPago®, a solution that links bank accounts and credit cards to a mobile phone and enables merchant payments, airtime topup, bill payment and person-to-person transfers between multiple financial institutions with ease. tPago® was launched in July 2010 in the Dominican Republic to great success. To this date the product has penetrated 25% of the banked population in only 3.5 years. In this timeframe the product has amassed more than 432 thousand subscribers by the end of 2013 with a year-over-year growth of 40%. In its last year of operations it processed 13.7 million transactions making it the most successful mobile payments product in the region thanks to its average amount of transactions per active user. As a payment method, tPago® is accepted by more than 9,000 merchants across the nation. 2013 was a year of important accolades for the product. It was shortlisted as Best Mobile Payments Platform Service at the Mobile2Payments Awards 2013 at the Mobile Money and Payments in Miami, Florida.

In its pilot phase, the first corporate clients that leveraged this service were Philip Morris Dominicana and Frito Lay Dominicana.

Through the launch of Orange m-peso, GCS International reaffirms its commitment to innovation and new ways of handling financial transactions through state-of-the-art proven custom-made solutions leveraging mobile phones for both end consumers and companies alike.