Booming global cross-border e-commerce trade drives 48% Retail growth for PPRO in 2018

London, UK, 19 February, 2019: PPRO, a cross-border e-payment specialist and one of the fastest growing fintech businesses in Europe, has today announced 48% growth for the Acquiring business in Retail e-commerce in 2018. The growth comes after a strong year for PPRO, who now works with 130 global Payment Service Providers (PSPs) to offer merchants access to 140+ local payment methods to bolster cross-border trade and expand their international customer base.

PPRO’s successes in 2018 includes a $50 million USD investment round led by PayPal with participation from Citi Ventures and return investor HPE Growth Capital. Through this investment, PPRO has accelerated the expansion of its payment’s platform and international presence of its local, alternative payments acquiring business.

With support from 103 staff working on Acquiring across eight global offices, PPRO works with its partners to assist over 100,000 boarded merchants to boost international cross-border commerce through its unique and diverse offering of Local Payment Methods (LPMs) covering acquiring, processing and funds collection, all under one contract and without becoming a competitor to PSP partners.

The process of making a payment is one of the most important customer touch points, giving merchants, card issuers, and acquirers significant opportunity to shape customer perceptions, capture valuable data, and build loyalty. The relationships formed through these repeated interactions allow institutions to deepen their customer understanding, foster customer trust, and improve cross-border selling^[1].

Ronnie D´Arienzo, Member of the Executive team and Chief Revenue Officer at PPRO said: “The payments industry is rapidly evolving and is on track to add $1 trillion in new revenue through to 2027¹. To become a thought leader in this fast growing environment, we believe that personalization and customization are two key factors. Commerce moves from a channel to a customer-centric model and continues to globalize fast. In this transformation, payments will play a significant role, will be simpler, smarter and customised for consumers, more secure and transparent. Local payment methods will be the ‘rail’ to drive financial inclusion and are paramount to cross-border commerce. It’s important merchants recognise this before making their first step into international markets.”

“With booming cross border-commerce and international payments continuing to drive PPRO’s business growth, we look forward to seeing what the next five years have to offer”.

Key highlights include:

Methods integrated: PPRO has continued to grow its LPM offerings across the year and now offers 143 methods, with the latest additions including Bank Islam, Hong Leong Ban, Krungsri Bank (replacing Paysbuy), Bangkok Bank, Krung Thai Bank, SCB, Tesco Lotus. Klarna, Union Pay as a direct acquirer and Alipay in store will be integrated this year.

Payment partnerships: As well as newly on-boarded methods, PPRO successfully partnered with many PSPs in 2018, including ChinaPay, PayPal, SecureTrading, Yapstone, Credorax and Isbank.. These partnerships further bolster PPRO’s extensive LPM offering to enable merchants to accept international customers, boost global reach and ultimately, increase profitability in new markets.

Global Footprint: In order to better support its PSP partners who are looking to expand their international trade opportunities and grow their international customer base of merchants, PPRO has this year broadened its global footprint, growing the existing office in the US and opening a new office in Singapore, with Latin America in the pipeline for 2019. This will benefit local PSPs and will provide the opportunity for PPRO to educate local merchants on the expansive international possibilities available.

What’s in store for 2019: One of PPRO’ s main focuses for the rest of 2019 will be to work with its PSP partners to educate the 1000,000+ boarded Merchants to improve the rate of international cross-border success. In addition to developing the extensive pipeline of PSP prospects, PPRO will accelerate the expansion of its LPM worldwide offering and further enhance the range of value-added services – watch this space!

^[1] http://image-src.bcg.com/Images/BCG-Global-Payments-2018-Oct-2018_tcm9-205095.pdf