fastacash, Cellum Take Aim At Trillion Dollar Mobile Payments Market

SINGAPORE & BUDAPEST – 11 February 2016 – fastacash, the global technology enabler of payments through social media and messaging apps, and Cellum, a leading mobile wallet provider handling around two million monthly transactions, have entered into a strategic cooperation. Under this, the two companies have combined their service capabilities and geographic reach – with a view to accelerate their global growth. fastacash integrates Cellum’s top-security grade digital wallet solution, mobile payment switching and card storage capabilities while Cellum takes advantage of fastacash’s social media payment capabilities, improved user experience and user interface design.

Cellum provides a highly secure mobile wallet solution to banks, telecommunication operators and card scheme networks – its partners. With fastacash, it brings an innovative financial technology solution to these partners, enabling them to tap into the shift in consumer preferences around mobile money payments through social media channels. fastacash also brings its user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design capabilities, as well as opens up its fast-expanding global network of partners across Asia, Australia, Europe and North America to Cellum.

fastacash is a global payments leader through social media and messaging apps. It is now able to leverage Cellum’s network of partners as well as its global merchant base – to offer its omni-channel social payments service. New markets opened up to fastacash through the partnership, include Japan and Thailand in Asia, as well as Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary in Europe. fastacash is also able to offer Cellum’s PCI DSS certified white label mobile wallet to its banking and non-financial partners, who can build their own social payments solutions, complete with a mobile wallet, powered by fastacash.

Transaction capabilities provided by fastacash and Cellum include between people (Peer-to-Peer – P2P), and between people and merchants (Person-to-Merchant – P2M), through up to 24 social media channels including Facebook Messenger, Line, Twitter, WeChat and WhatsApp. The integration of Cellum’s merchant base will also enable fastacash to launch its service, called Request-to-Pay (RTP), With RTP, consumers can request their social connections – family members, friends, acquaintances etc. – to complete offline and online transactions on their behalf, facilitating e-gifts as well as enabling transactions to end-users who may not have access to banking and payment mechanisms. By giving the purchaser and payer the ability to transact together, RTP makes e-commerce and e-gifting a more social experience.

Vince Tallent, Chairman and CEO of fastacash said, “Half the world’s population is on social media networks and messaging apps – many are now using these channels to exchange money, disrupting how consumers transact. With Cellum, we are able to strengthen our service capabilities, extending wider, more comprehensive social commerce solutions to our customer networks. This takes both companies in a new direction to deliver accelerated growth, which positions us more suitably to tap the trillion dollar mobile payment market.”

János Kóka, Chairman and CEO of Cellum said, “Our innovation and security, combined with fastacash’s expertise and track record in allowing users to move money and payments across social channels, will allow us to jointly offer our business partners more comprehensive solutions. There is immense value in this cooperation, bringing improved mobile-first solutions, disrupting how people and businesses transact. As consumers shift their preferences towards mobile payments over social networks, we will empower our partners to get in at an early stage of this shift.”

Research firm Forrester estimates that by the end of 2016 there will be 4.8 billion people using mobile devices; 46 percent will be smartphones. IDC has forecast that mobile payments will rise from a little under US$500 billion in 2015 to over US$1 trillion in 2017, a 124 percent increase.