Electronic PrePay Tops Ups Expand in Poland

Euronet Worldwide's subsidiary, e-pay, has entered the Polish market launching electronic top-up services (e-top-up) with agreements with all three of Poland's mobile operators. PTK Centertel and Polkomtel S.A. have already launched the e-top-up service, and Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa, the Era network operator, is now expected to launch in fourth quarter 2003.

Leveraging Euronet's existing recharge presence in Poland, e-pay began the rollout of e-top-up services in July 2003. All three mobile operators in Poland have Euronet recharge agreements for ATM and/or handset distribution, and are expanding with point-of-sale(POS) based services through retail locations. e-pay Poland has installed over 200 POS terminals to support e-top-up in a mobile operator's stores, and plans to continue increasing the e-top-up distribution through small- and large-scale merchants. Euronet already has signed a distribution agreement with Geant Polska, one of the country's largest retailers, with 15 hypermarkets throughout Poland.

"Centertel has been impressed with Euronet's ability to provide us with next-generation recharge solutions," said Jean-Marc Vignolles, Centertel vice president. "Now with the addition of e-pay's solutions, our customers can recharge their prepaid mobile airtime at retailers across Poland. With these solutions, we have fulfilled our strategy of being the leader in providing new convenient solutions to our customers." Centertel, a subsidiary of France Telecom, is the largest operator in the prepaid market with 3.1 million prepaid customers. Centertel had previously implemented Euronet' ATM Recharge and Mobile Recharge products.

e-pay's top-up service is supported through e-pay's operations center in the U.K., which is currently processing 8 million transactions per month. These prepaid services are based on a proprietary technology platform that features a state-of-the-art switching engine offering billing, customer service, trouble reporting, credit management, settlement and reconciliation. This system supports online electronic top-up at retail locations via small terminals or by EPoS for retailers with multiple locations and multiple checkout points. This form of top-up replaces scratch-off cards, which are more costly to handle and may have a high instance of theft."

Posted to the site on 5th September 2003