Vipera Plc (LON:VIP) Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer Simon Pearce caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the expanded contract with Government Savings Bank of Thailand
Q1: Great news out this morning for Vipera, can you tell us a bit more about your relationship with the Government Savings Bank of Thailand (GSB) and how it’s developed since your initial contract with them in 2014?
A1: The initial contract actually came through a partner of ours, TNFIS, which is a local, and very well through of, systems integrator. The Government Savings Bank were really looking for a way to provide mobile banking to their many millions of customers but in a very efficient way.
So, together with TNFIS, we put together a proposal that would be able to deliver a flexible but very low-cost solution to the Bank and that was accepted in, as you say, 2014. That installation has now developed over the last 2–3 years into a very very successful solution in partnership between ourselves and TNFIS and the bank to deliver not just core mobile banking but a range of other interesting payment services as well.
Q2: Can you tell us more about your partner TNFIS?
A2: Yes, TNFIS was a very well-regarded system integrator who had a lot of knowledge about core banking and payment systems but the issue that they had, I think, was that they were looking for a solution that would provide a lot more flexibility than the traditional systems gave them. So, whilst they were implementing lots of ‘old school technology solutions’ into the market, the market was starting to demand them a much faster pace of innovation and that wasn’t able to be done with the systems they were familiar with.
So, when they saw our MOTIF platform, it ticked all the boxes in terms of flexibility, speed to market etc. that would allow them to really jump on that innovation curve.
Q3: GSB has exceeded 1 million users and they’re purchasing another 1 million, what does that mean for Vipera?
A3: Obviously, it’s a fantastic endorsement of our product and also of the services that can be delivered, I think it demonstrates that not only that the technology is scalable and robust but also, it’s really about the extensibility of it.
So, the reason I think they’re picking up, so many new customers so rapidly is because it’s able to not just stand still in terms of its offering, the MOTIF platform is able to add increasing numbers of new services without changing the core infrastructure.
I think in addition to that, it’s actually an entirely new business model so I mentioned the fact that the solution is provided by TNFIS and ourselves in partnership with the Bank, the bank has not had to build in lots of new technology into its infrastructure, we’re actually delivering this as a service to the Bank users which really limits the impact on the Bank’s IT and allows the business people to drive the solutions.
Q4: You’ve made reference to Vipera’s MOTIF a few times now, can you explain for us the benefits of MOTIF and who it’s used by?
A4: So, MOTIF is really a platform of its time, it’s an open platform that can deliver the management of all of the digital channels, whether that be hooked into a core banking system in a mobile banking context or even in a PSD2 context where MOTIF can actually coordinate multiple third-party offerings.
So, in actual fact, the benefit of it is that it allows banks, who are our primary customers, to deliver a road map of both banking and payment and value-added services to their end customers through the mobile channel.
We already integrated into a number of different services from people like Mastercard, Visa, a number of different payment gateways, and we offer a pre-formed set of solutions that can be created. We also offer, particularly in this PSD2 environment, the ability to create new services and link to new fintech’s or new interesting third-party solutions very quickly and easily.
