Singapore’s fastacash and Hungary’s Cellum join hands to expand reach

‎By Anisa Menur A. Maulani for e27.com

 The combined network of fastacash and Cellum will span over 200 million users across Asia, Australia, Europe and North America

Singapore-based social media and messenger-based online payment enabler fastacash and Budapest-based mobile wallet provider Cellum today announced a new strategic cooperation to accelerate their global growth. Under the new partnership, the two companies are set to combine both their service capabilities and global reach.

With clients in banks, telecommunication operators and card scheme networks, Cellum is able to open new markets for fastacash in Japan and Thailand, as well as Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary. It also will offer fastacash its PCI DSS certified white label mobile wallet to its banking and non-financial partners.

Meanwhile, fastacash brings innovative financial technology solution to the partners, enabling them to tap into the shift in consumer preferences towards mobile money payments through social media channels. fastacash also brings its user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design capabilities.

The combined reach of both companies’ users will span over 200 million people across four continents – Asia, Australia, Europe and North America.

“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,” said János Kóka, Chairman and CEO of Cellum in a written statement.

fastacash and Cellum’s partnership will also include peer-to-peer (P2P) and people-to-merchants (P2M) transaction capabilities 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 Request-to-Pay (RTP) service, which enables consumers to request their social connections 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.

“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 … [The partnership] takes both companies in a new direction to deliver accelerated growth, which positions us more suitably to tap the trillion dollar mobile payment market,” said Vince Tallent, Chairman and CEO of fastacash.

Research firm Forrester estimates that by the end of 2016 there will be 4.8 billion people using mobile devices with 46 per cent of them being smartphones.

IDC has also forecasted that mobile payments will rise 124 per cent from a little under US$500 billion in 2015 to over US$1 trillion in 2017.