Netopia: Our Target Is Market Share

05.24.2011 ZF English

Netopia Sistem, a provider of payment services through mobile phone text messages (SMS) and a processor of online bank card payments, has as its main target this year to increase its market share, Antonio Eram, the company's founder and CEO, told ZF in an interview.

"We are interested in gaining market share on the segments of card and SMS payments. It is very important for us to grab market share. We are not necessarily looking at revenues and profit this year (...)," said Eram.

Netopia, which last year posted more than EUR5 million in turnover, up 5% against 2009, has two main business lines: MobilPay - which offers card payment solutions via SMS and by phone and Web2SMS - a mobile marketing solution whereby companies can send promotional messages and notifications to customers.

MobilPay accounts for 70% of the revenues and Web2SMS for 30%. Last year, the company posted a profit of 700,000 lei (EUR170,000).

"On MobilPay, the SMS payments segment, we had an 80% share of the market in 2009, which we kept last year, as well. In 2010, the market amounted to around 800,000 payments via SMS, with MobilPay processing 650,000 of them. Clients are websites such as okazii.ro, travian, computergames.ro, imobiliare.ro," said the Netopia head.

The company's revenues come from fees charged on each transaction. For instance, for micropayments via SMS, the company charges a 1.2-euro fee, but it can be higher in some cases.

On the segment of card Internet payments, a service launched by the company in October 2009, the biggest clients in 2010 were online auction website okazii.ro and emag, the biggest local IT&C retailer. The company works, according to its own estimates, with 90% of price discounts websites, which generated a very high volume of card transactions: 200,000 in the first three months of this year alone.

On this market, Netopia's main rival is Gecad ePayment, founded by businessman Radu Georgescu, which has been controlled since 2010 by South-African media giant Naspers. Netopia scored its first major victory against Gecad in February, when it won the Vodafone account, the number two on the local mobile telephony market and one of the biggest companies in Romania.