Given the perilous state of the economy it’s no small achievement to grow revenues, but to double them four years in a row deserves a certain amount of kudos. That’s exactly what mobile money firm Monitise has managed to do, announcing annual revenue of £72.8m, up 102% year-on-year.
Monitise – a British-headquartered firm founded in 2003 and listed on the London Stock Exchange – says it enables leading banks, payments companies, retailers and mobile networks to offer their customers mobile banking, paying and buying offerings.
Already the firm says 24 million consumers benefit from its patented technology to ‘bank anywhere’, ‘pay anyone’ and ‘buy anything’, accounting for $50bn of payments, purchases and transfers annually.
There’s been a flurry of news put out by the company this week. Not only those stellar financial results, but also news that it is to acquire Grapple Mobile, a mobile innovation and design business.
Yesterday it announced a partnership with IBM that will see the firms boost Visa Europe’s ability to provide its member banks with new mobile banking, payment and commerce services in the cloud. Today it also announced that it has promoted Visa Europe CEO and President Peter Ayliffe as the new chairman of its Mobile Money Group.
As for the Grapple Mobile buy, Monitise said it’s all about boosting its creative capabilities. Grapple will be folded into Monitise Create, a division focused on designing and developing digital strategies and user experiences. Prior to its acquisition Grapple had worked with leading European brands including Whitbread, Procter & Gamble, Sky and B&Q.
The ability to bank, pay and buy on mobiles is clearly a pretty hot area. As reported yesterday, Visa predicts that by 2020, for example, more than half of its transactions will be carried out on a mobile device.
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At least one analyst is impressed with Monitise’s trajectory. As Goldman Sachs remarked in a broker note yesterday, "Monitise’s product launches and major customer and contract wins in the past 12 months lend significant credibility to its technology platform." Goldman added that Monitise, "Is no longer a concept stock and the market underestimates its potential to become a platform vendor encompassing the mobile banking, payments and mobile commerce segments."
A ten-year-old company already achieving notable milestones, Monitise is surely one to watch.
