AEON expects boost from mPos payments

AEON Thana Sinsap is the third Thai financial institution to have launched mobile point of sale (mPos), which it calls “easy pay service”, following Kasikornbank and Bank of Ayudhya.
With merchants able to use a smart phone as the card-accepting device, the consumer-finance lender wants mPos to be the main system for supporting its card business and insurance brokerage.
AEON Insurance Service managing director Sakarabhop Dhivarakara said yesterday that mPos would facilitate the insurance credit-collection system, as most of its customers prefer to pay their premiums by credit card.
At present, AEON Insurance provides four payment channels to customers: cash, bank transfer, instalment programmes with Visa and MasterCard, and an instalment programme with AEON Than Sinsap.
With half of the current 600,000 customers holding AEON credit cards, the company believes the payment technology will help boost 2013 premiums from the previous target of Bt2.1 billion.
He said the company would use the results of utilising mPos in the second half of this year as the base for its rolling three-year business plan covering 2014-2016. By 2016, annual premiums are expected to rise to Bt3 billion, he added.
As to performance in the first six months, the brokerage brought in premiums of more than Bt1 billion.
AEON Insurance Service plans to add 300 agents to its current force of 200 in using mPos for accepting premiums. The company’s focus is on non-life insurance, 60 per cent of which is auto insurance.
AEON Thana Sinsap (Thailand) aims to sell around 5,000 mPos units by the end of the year, of which 500 will be for its AEON Insurance Service (Thailand) unit.
Yasuhiko Kondo, managing director of AEON Thana Sinsap (Thailand), said the company intends to be the major Thai player in mPos service.
By next year, the number of AEON mPos units will increase to 20,000, and the number of merchants using the system will expand to 20,000 from an estimated 15,000 at the end of this year, he said.
AEON currently has its own electronic data capture (EDC) system, but it only accepts AEON credit cards. The mPos service can accept all credit cards, he added.
Traders have to pay about Bt2,000 for an mPos unit.
Somboon Krobteeranon, Visa country manager, Myanmar and Thailand, said Visa is a partner of AEON in helping drive electronic payments in Thailand, beyond the current emphasis on EDC.
The potential volume of transactions that can conducted via mPos is large, because it is used in insurance business and financial institutions offer instalment programmes to attract customers, he said.
Even though mPos was introduced to Thailand last year, only 2,000-3,000 units have been sold to date, he added.