The Peppermint Innovation Ltd (ASX: PIL) share price is surging 13% higher today after signing an Application Programming Interface (API) agreement with major Filipino bank Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI).
The API agreement means BPI will start offering Peppermint's bizmoto platform, an ecommerce and BPay-esque service, to its four million account holders.
Landmark agreement in key market
Peppermint's service allows its customers to pay bills, conduct e-commerce, delivery and logistics, and mobile financial tasks through a mobile wallet. Customers can then top up and transact remotely.
Peppermint will undertake a direct marketing campaign as part of the deal, promoting the bizmoto services. The agreement has a 'go live' date for the second half of this year.
Peppermint's Managing Director and CEO, Chris Kain, said that forming an agreement with BPI was a landmark in the company's expansion into the South-East Asian market.
"This is a significant agreement for Peppermint Innovation, and it's a privilege to be able to do business with the Bank of the Philippine Islands, who were the first bank in the Philippines and South East Asia," he said.
"BPI is such a respected institution in the Philippines and Peppermint's proven capability and track record of working with other banking entities has positioned us well to do business with BPI. As soon as we can, we will execute targeted awareness and marketing campaigns in partnership with BPI to their over four million customer account holders.
"To put that in context, we currently have over 50,000 bizmoto agents so we have the potential to market and explain how our bizmoto platform works to almost 80 times the number of current registered agents.
"This is yet another step forward on our path to building out our range of bizmoto ecosystem of services across the Philippines and to tackling the problem of providing inclusive financial services to the people of the Philippines."
Peppermint share price on sharp yearly incline
The Peppermint share price has risen more than 230% this year-to-date, with investors also realising the brand's potential to capture the lucrative emerging 'buy now, pay later' market across southern Asia.
While Peppermint's bizmoto platform is currently based around mobile remittance — allowing customers to set up their own mobile businesses — the company has the potential to transition towards an end-to-end banking service.
This is the second major announcement for Peppermint this month, after the company revealed its micro-insurance product BizmoProtect on 3 March.
At the time of writing, the Peppermint share price is swapping hands for 4.1 cents.
