Demand Forces M-Pay Upgrade

Advanced M-Pay, the joint venture between the cellular operators AIS and NTT DoCoMo, is spending an additional 100 million baht to promote its mobile payment service, after registering faster-than-expected growth in mobile-to-mobile money refill service this year. The company also expects to earn a profit next year for the first time according to the Bangkok Post.

Of the total investment up to 70 million baht is slated for marketing while the remaining 30 million would be spent on doubling system capacity to accommodate 10 million transactions per month. In May alone One-2-Call prepaid customers refilled accounts in up to three million transactions through 30,000 M-agent vendors, for a value of 230 million baht, compared to 250 million baht in the first quarter.

The company plans to offer the third phase of its M-pay service through a new contact-less payment channel in 2009.