Parseq, the financial services outsourcing and mobile banking group, announced that it won a three year, multi-million pound contract to build, host and manage a mobile wallet service for O2. The telecommunications company O2 is a major new entrant to the UK retail financial services market and the service, called O2 mobile wallet, is due to be launched in H2 2011.
Intelligent Environments, Parseq’s mobile and online banking software business, will develop and manage the wallet application for handsets.
The O2 product is the second success Parseq has announced in the mobile financial application market in as many months. In April, it was announced that Barclaycard had been awarded Payments Innovation of the Year at the Financial Sector Technology Awards 2011 for its Orange Credit Card iPhone application which runs on Parseq's mobile banking platform, mobinetic. The O2 contract, along with the award, seem to demonstrate Parseq's ability to provide a complete mobile banking application service, including software, hosting and support, via a secure technology platform.
PARSEQ AGM Report. The company is a merger of the old Intelligent Environments and Documetric – the former providing software for the banking sector while the latter provide outsourcing services to financial institutions. Combining the two operations should enable it to close new deals, like the recent one for O2 to provide a mobile phone payment service.
The Annual Report says that to meet expectations for the year, a “step change in the level of new sales” is required. It seems this situation has not changed despite the recent O2 deal announcement. The O2 deal is mainly a development services project, billable this year and paid in advance. Parseq will retain the intellectual property and can sell the same solution to others.
I questioned the large amount of expenditure both this year and last on equipment, and did not really get a very clear explanation of what it was for or why it was necessary.
In summary the company seems to have some interesting technology and resources now potentially to close larger deals but trying to predict the sales and profits for this year and next is a bit like sticking your finder in the wind. So this is possibly a company to keep an eye on for the future.
I hope to do a fuller report for the ShareSoc newsletter later this month.
Roger Lawson
