Monitise share price soars on extension to IBM partnership
London-listed Monitise saw its shares soar 13.2 per cent yesterday after the mobile banking and payments firm announced a deeper alliance with business giant IBM. This would include the transfer of teams from Monitise’s development and implementation workforce to IBM.
Monitise sells white-label mobile banking software – used by customers including Visa, Natwest and HSBC – which has to be integrated into banks’ existing systems.
The IBM alliance aims to dramatically boost the integration ability of Monitise’s existing 1,000-strong workforce.
About 20 per cent of Monitise staff will join IBM as the companies work to develop a sales strategy that will bring Monitise to larger global customers.
“Our previous model works fine to an extent. But obviously our aspiration is to be the biggest mobile money company in the world, and that’s what this alliance with IBM is all about,” Monitise chief executive Alastair Lukies told City PM
“What we needed was global scale, we’re getting calls from banks all around the world who have heard about our technology and want to work with us, but even with 1,000 staff you can’t cover the globe.
“With the staff transfer we’ll become a centre of excellence within IBM for mobile money, and we’re transferring our technology into the IBM cloud so all their big data centres can then host our technology.
“Then IBM’s sales staff along with our sales staff can both go out there and meet the global demand,” added Lukies.
Monitise shares closed up at 47.57p.