WALTHAM, MA – Peppercoin, a payments company that enables profitable, new business models for low-priced digital content and physical goods, today announced Peppercoin 3.0 for Financial Service Institutions (FSIs) and merchants. Peppercoin 3.0 is the only solution that helps FSIs and merchants build market adoption for small payments by supporting the following business models:
- Pay-as-you-go
- Subscription
- Pre-paid
- Post-paid
The Peppercoin Small Transaction Suite allows merchants to accept consumers’ preferred and trusted payment mechanisms, their credit and debit cards, for small payments. Peppercoin offers a hosted service for merchants that integrates easily with existing payment systems to increase transaction volumes, revenues and profits for both merchants and FSIs. At the same time, it reduces transaction processing and customer service costs associated with small payments.
“As a vending operator, we believe Version 3.0 of Peppercoin’s Small Transaction Suite will grow both revenue and profitability, and ultimately afford North County Vending the financial flexibility to enter new vending markets that to date have been unappealing due to profitability concerns,” said John Sowell, CEO of North County Vending. “By offering consumers flexibility — such as the ability to transact with their preferred cards in a pre-paid or pay-as-you-go manner — our sales will increase.”
“Reino Parking Systems has led the parking industry in providing alternative payment methods. However, the continued challenge has always been how to handle transactions of less than $5 profitably, and in a way that is accepted by consumers,” said Mark Ralston, COO, Reino Parking Systems. “Peppercoin provides the only small payments solution that allows market leaders in the physical world, like Reino, to card-enable cash and coin transactions profitably. With the Small Transaction Suite, consumers can pay for on-street parking with their preferred credit and debit cards in the manner most appealing to them, whether it’s on a prepaid, pay-per-use or subscription basis.”
Peppercoin extends the existing credit and debit payment system to enable acquiring banks, issuing banks, payment processors and the credit card associations to capture a greater share of small-payment transactions. By offering the Small Transaction Suite to their merchant customers, these FSIs will participate in large new revenue streams generated by increased transaction flow to their payment systems. For this reason, key FSIs such as First Data Merchant Services, Chase Merchant Services and Moneris Solutions have established relationships with Peppercoin.
“Peppercoin is the only small-payment vendor that addresses the digital, mobile and physical point-of-sale markets,” said Mark Friedman, president of Peppercoin. “With the ability to support pay-as-you-go, pre-paid, subscription and post-paid payment methods, Peppercoin enables both merchants and FSIs the broadest range of both pure and blended small payment business models from a single suite of payment applications.”
“As the market for low-priced electronic transactions gains speed, leading services will distinguish themselves through the ability to support their customers’ needs across multiple environments and transaction types,” said Ed Kountz, Senior Analyst, Emerging Technology Solutions, Tower Group. “Peppercoin 3.0 is an example of the types of advances that will help move user centric micropayments into the mainstream.”
The Small Transaction Suite
The Small Transaction Suite is a single platform that addresses merchants’ and FSIs’ needs to support small payments. By enabling consumers to use their preferred credit and debit cards for low-priced goods, Peppercoin generates more payments on the existing payment network and FSIs grow revenue as a result.
Peppercoin 3.0 provides:
- Business Model Flexibility: Peppercoin’s robust, flexible small-payment platform, based on credit and debit usage, enables merchants to optimize revenue and profitability via a blend of offerings, including pay-as-you- go, pre-paid, subscription and post-paid. Peppercoin’s solution allows merchants to experiment and tune their offerings over time.
- Market ubiquity: Peppercoin’s Small Transaction Suite simultaneously supports digital, mobile and physical point-of-sale (POS) markets. Merchants can offer their products and services through different channels, and acquiring banks and payment processors can select one small-payment platform to address the broadest range of merchant needs.
- Consumer ease-of-use: With Peppercoin-enabled merchants and FSIs, consumers can buy exactly what they want, the way they want (on a pay- per-use, prepaid or subscription basis) and with their preferred and trusted payment device (credit/debit cards from Visa and MasterCard). Peppercoin’s technology is transparent to the consumer.
- Efficient, small payment processing: Peppercoin’s core technology provides an Intelligent Aggregation™ platform for all payments, allowing cost-effective edge processing with real-time performance scaling to handle large transaction volumes.
- A secure and reliable architecture: The Small Transaction Suite abides by the rules and regulations of the credit card associations, and is compliant with the following data security requirements: Visa CISP, MasterCard SDP, American Express DSOP and Discover DISC. It meets the core reliability, availability, security and scalability needs of both merchants and FSIs.
Significant Market Opportunity
Consumers are demonstrating a clear and growing preference to use their credit and debit cards for all sizes and types of purchases. In a 2004 study, Ipsos-Insight estimated that roughly 37.5 million US consumers would choose to use their credit and debit cards for transactions below $5.
Each year, more than 354 billion cash transactions occur in the U.S. for less than $5 at the physical point-of-sale, representing $1.32 trillion in aggregate revenue. Leading markets include vending ($18 billion), parking ($10 billion), coin-op ($6 billion) and quick-serve-restaurants ($110 billion).
The online and mobile small payment opportunities are substantial as well; fueled by music, games, video, publishing and services. TowerGroup estimates the digital micropayments opportunity reached more than $3 billion in 2004. And a September 2004 Ipsos-Insight study revealed that, in just one year, the number of US consumers who have made small online purchases grew 250%, from 4 million to 14 million.
Product Availability
Peppercoin’s Small Transaction Suite, Version 3.0, will be placed in operation in Q2 2005.
About Peppercoin, Inc.
Peppercoin enables profitable new business models for low-priced digital content and physical goods. Peppercoin’s small payment products help merchants, banks, and other payments companies build market adoption quickly through a flexible, consumer-friendly approach. Peppercoin integrates easily with existing business models and systems to accelerate revenues and increase profits while dramatically lowering transaction and customer service costs. For more information visit www.peppercoin.com.
