12/12/2000

DBS in strategic alliance with Planet Payment

www.lafferty.com

Originally published 11-02-00

DBS in strategic alliance with Planet Payment

www.lafferty.com

Originally published 11-02-00

One of Asia's most progressive banks, Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), is entering into a ground breaking strategic alliance with Planet Payment, a leading provider of Internet payment solutions worldwide.

Philippe Paillart, senior managing director at DBS, announced the alliance at the 1st Lafferty Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur, stating that the deal would allow participating merchants of any size to accept real-time credit card payment in any currency.

"This alliance shows two things: first that we are going from mono-currency to multi-currency, and second that we want more and more to develop product-concept payment mechanisms with partners…” Paillart said.

The alliance will operate in several Asian countries…”

Planet Payment is a private US/Bermuda company offering real-time credit card processing, payments gateway and merchant services in multiple currencies. Authorize.Net powers its international gateway. Planet Playment had about 3,000 merchant clients in 30 countries by May 2000.

It already has strategic alliances with American Express, payments solutions provider Trintech, Cable & Wireless, Authorize.Net and Bank of Bermuda. Its agreement with Bank of Bermuda allows it to offer multi-currency services. It uses the SSL security platform, and customers can trade and settle in over 140 currencies. Planet Payment processes payments with Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

The Planet Payment agreement is part of DBS's wider stated aim of being pan-Asian and the best and largest retail bank in the region. Using existing platforms, DBS plans to achieve this through a combination of acquisitions and internal growth. At present, DBS has a sizeable banking operation in Thailand, a start-up operation in Hong Kong and is working with BPI Bank in the Philippines. DBS has close to 130,000 online users of its Internet banking offering, and expects this to rise to 200,000 by the end of the year. Overall, the bank has about five million individual and business customers in 13 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Paillart said that to remain on the offensive, banks must venture beyond the B2C field into B2B if they are to protect the value chain. In this regard, DBS is acting as a 'facilitator' and a 'precipitator', he said. As a facilitator, DBS seeks to enable B2B e-commerce and B2C e-tailing to take place. The Planet deal falls into this category.

In addition, the bank launched Direct Debit Payments, or d2pay, on 6 October. Via d2pay, customers can initiate payments online to pay merchants for goods and services bought via the Internet. The authorised amount is debited against their accounts on a real-time basis. The d2pay service offers e-payment capabilities, e-notification of the transaction result and facilities for automated settlement. D2pay complements DBS' roll out in May of another e-payment solution, known as c2pay. This solution is for credit and debit cardholders.

As a B2B precipitator, DBS seeks to bring B2B participants together, such as in its global e-procurement platform, operated by its affiliate Bxcom in South East Asia.

"We believe the future is in not creating all the processes ourselves, but being at the centre of what's going on," Paillart said. DBS confirmed at the end of September that it had held informal discussions with several Australian banks in recent months. Most recently, it talked with Westpac, but all of the talks were inconclusive, DBS said in a statement.

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