SmallCapPower | April 17, 2018: The Mint Corporation's (TSXV:MIT) latest announcement is set to change the way purchases are made in one part of the Middle East. Effective April 15, 2018, Mint's majority-owned subsidiary, Mint Middle East LLC (MME), has signed exclusive licensing agreements with Interac Corp., Canada's first and only domestic debit network, granting MME rights in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to use Interac's payments software products.
For UAE, with a population of more than nine million and a GDP that is expected to exceed US$400 billion this year according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Interac would be the first debit system in that country, acting as an interbank network that links financial institutions and other business, providing consumers with a secure and immediate way to pay for goods and services directly from their bank accounts.
Mint Middle East has strong support from UAE to initiate a debit system as part of the government's initiative to achieve financial inclusion, said Mint Middle East CEO Abdulrazzaq Al Abdullah in a recent interview with TradeArabia. At a fraction of the cost of credit-card transactions, merchants have embraced Interac debit in Canada, helping generate more than 5.7 billion transactions per year according to Interac's Head of International Business Development James Good. It has also offered consumers a convenient, cashless way to pay for purchases without incurring debt.
Given that UAE's population is about one third that of Canada's, Interac transactions in UAE could potentially grow to about 600 million per year, which translates into more than $100 million in annual revenue potential for Mint if merchants agreed to pay just $0.20 per transaction, as an example.
Mint Corporation currently provides employers with automated payroll services and a proprietary Automated Teller Machine (ATM) network for unbanked employees in the UAE. UAE has a migrant worker population of more than five million and the law states that employers cannot pay these migrant workers in cash. This translates into a market potential of US$25 billion per year, based on the average annual migrant salary of US$5000, of which Mint hopes to capture 25% of that $25 billion opportunity.
With Mint already being an established player in the UAE payments industry, with its community of more than 400,000 cardholders and its status as a third-party payment processor for both Mastercard and China's UnionPay, this agreement with Interac should further enhance Mint's brand recognition and market acceptance.
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