I didn't
know that there are eNETs services.
Must check it out.
[color=green]from the straits times[/url]
SEPT 1, 2003
New chief exec wants Nets to be more 'in your face'
She hopes to raise profile of the company, which seems to be known
only for its point-of-sale service
By Hugh Chow
FINANCE CORRESPONDENT
NETS, the electronics payments firm, needs an image makeover.
According to its new chief executive officer (CEO) Poh Mui Hoon,
most Singaporeans do not really know what the company does.
In May, Ms Poh, 41, took over at the helm of the firm which enables
most of the debit card transactions in Singapore to take
place.
She reckons that one of her most important tasks is to thrust the
17-year-old company further into the public eye.
'For a long time Nets has been known for its point-of-sale service.
Actually we have a lot of other products...but I think the
mind-share that people have of these products is not there. We
don't have the top-of-mind recall yet.'
In her first media interview since taking up the job, Ms Poh
outlined a strategy that seeks to build on long-time CEO Wee Tew
Lim's legacy, but departs from his low-key approach to doing
business.
'We all need to market ourselves,' says Ms Poh, who was the former
head of homegrown e-commerce firm Sesami.
'One thing that Nets needs to improve on is...getting it out to the
market and telling the whole world that we are doing all this.
That's the part that I would like to make a major difference
in.'
Nearly everyone knows about the Nets debit card system - or in the
industry jargon Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale (Eftpos)
- which accounts for most of Nets' 42 per cent share of the total
value of retail payments (excluding car purchases) made in
Singapore.
Nets stands for Network for Electronic Transfers Singapore.
With around 25,000 Nets terminals offered by 12,000 merchants, the
Nets share of the debit card business grew by 10 per cent in the
first six months of this year compared to the same period last
year.
But few people know that the company is also responsible for the
cashcard used in the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) reader sitting
on their car dashboard, or that this cashcard can be used to pay
for fares in about 8,000 taxis.
Even fewer people know that Nets has developed a whole range of
services, eNETS, which allows consumers to buy things over the
Internet, to pay for purchases using their mobile phones, and to
transfer money to and from bank accounts via e-mail.
Ms Poh said Nets had previously been more concerned with making
sure that all the technology worked without a hitch - in her words,
'getting it right'.
Now she wants to increase the company's market share by persuading
more people to use less cash - 'increasing its wallet share of the
consumer' - and she wants to do more of this overseas.
The company will soon announce a deal that it signed recently to
provide online credit card processing for customers of DBS Bank
(Hong Kong). Nets would not disclose the value of the contract but
a company spokesman said transaction flows would be 'significant'.
Another deal in Thailand is also in the pipeline.
These deals would supplement previous forays overseas in countries
such as South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Nets wants the foreign share of total revenues to account for
between 10 and 15 per cent of total revenues within three years,
from less than 5 per cent last year.
Ms Poh reckons that there is still ample room for 'healthy growth'
in the domestic Singapore market, even as competition intensifies
with some foreign banks such as Citibank choosing to partner other
companies such as Visa International to issue debit cards to their
customers.
'I don't see the impact at the moment. I'm not saying that we're
ignoring it but we're monitoring it.'
Whereas Nets charges retail outlets under 1 per cent of the
transaction value for each debit card sale, Ms Poh said her credit
card rivals charged between 1.5 and 2.5 per cent.
Copyright @ 2003 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights
reserved.