THE payment unit of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) is expected to close a deal next month for the disposal of a 5-percent stake to Japan’s leading integrated payment-solution provider Densan System Co. Ltd.
Meralco Senior Vice President and Chief Finance Officer Betty Siy-Yap said, “A new milestone is close to being achieved by CIS Bayad Center Inc.,” a wholly owned subsidiary of Meralco.
Siy-Yap was referring to the business cooperation arrangement signed by Bayad Center and Densan late last year. Such agreement has progressed to Densan’s agreeing to take a 5-percent equity stake in Bayad Center.
“This transaction is expected to close within May 2017,” Siy-Yap said.
This partnership shall leverage on each party’s competencies and strength with Densan providing the information-technology expertise to enable Bayad Center to tap more convenience stores as payment-fulfillment outlets.
“Densan has a strong presence and track record with convenience stores in Japan as a payment platform or channel,” Siy-Yap said.
Meralco President Oscar Reyes had said Densan was interested to acquire “a much higher” stake in Bayad Center, “but we’d like to see below 10 percent, initially just 5 percent.”
The Japanese firm’s investment in Bayan Center will mostly boost the technology of mobile-phone payment, Meralco Senior Vice President and Head of Customer Retail Services and Corporate Communications Alfredo Panlilio said.
“I was telling them, can you share with us technologies that we can use the mobile phone as payment? We’ll create teams to drill down on certain initiatives, like e-commerce. The long-term vision, I think, is, hopefully, we can bring it to Asia and to Africa,” Panlilio earlier said.
Bayad Center offers and accepts three major services. These are remittance payout, business center services and bills payment. It pioneered the concept of providing convenience when it comes to bills collection.
Densan has wide know-how in data processing, systems integration and software development that has been underpinning its information technology-based suite of payment solutions.