POS terminals send scratch cards to the antique bin
And as the switching steps up in tempo, so the company's sales just keep on rising.
When mobile operators introduced more lucrative margins on electronic prepaid vouchers last summer, the move signaled the beginning of the end for producers of logistically cumbersome and environmentally wasteful scratch cards. And EVS, which operates systems for the distribution of electronic products and services, reports that wholesalers and retailers alike have since come flocking in.
"Sales of scratch cards are particularly difficult to predict, which leads to a misfit of supply to demand. This tends to cause losses on potential income for retailers, wholesalers and mobile operators alike," says Christophe Michalak, managing director of EVS Polska, the local subsidiary of EVS GmbH Germany. Indeed, he calculates that better coverage of consumer demand provided by electronic products over the traditional scratch card can increase sales of prepaid top-ups by 15-25 percent.
The company, founded in December 2002, was the first to set up operations in POS terminals on the local market. POS terminals, installed in kiosks, small shops and convenience stores, and connected digitally to wholesalers and/or providers, enable retailers to sell mobile top-up time and other electronic products, without the need for physical tokens.
EVS, which started commercial operations last August, has recently broken even on turnovers which went from zero to zł.7.04 million by the end of May this year. EVS, which is active on several Western European markets, has also invested zł.228,000 (€50,000) in the Czech market and is currently negotiating with potential partners in Hungary and Slovakia.
On other markets, such as those in Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Ireland, EVS is bringing in additional products, and EVS Polska is not planning to stop at prepaid mobile services here, either. In Ireland, for example, the company services prepaid subscriptions for newspapers, Michalak explains, which are services that would also make the company a more attractive business partner to many of its potential clients, namely wholesale distributors to kiosks and petrol stations.
"From all the services we've looked at, POS terminals are the fastest growing," says Michele Scanlon, director of research and consultancy at Informa Telecoms. Neverthless, EVS could still face competition from companies that offer electronic payment systems through ATMs as well as POS terminals, as, she reveals, "combined portfolios have the attraction of a one-stop-shop to providers."
E-Pay, the European subsidiary of U.S.-based Euronet, for example, which controls large chunks of the northern European ATM payment market and which has been on the Polish ATM software market since 1996, introduced its own newly acquired POS technology in this country in August 2002. Robert Koński, the country manager for Poland, says he's never even heard of EVS.
As regards control of the market for POS terminals, though, the two companies are actually neck and neck with each other, with around 1,400 terminals each, over 50 percent of which are in kiosks. Both plan to add around 3,000 more, which would then account for about 50 percent of the potential market. And there is much ingrained custom to fight against, as mobile penetration in Poland is still only around 40 percent of the population (in the neighboring Czech Republic, for example, that figure is 80 percent) and of that 40 percent, more than half are prepaid phones.
Despite the global might of Euronet, even Koński admits that the company's European subsidiary is still learning the ropes of the kiosk-driven POS market in this country. And Michalak, at least, sees that as giving EVS Polska a distinct advantage. "We have four years of experience in the POS market," he says, "whereas E-Pay is fairly new to the business."
When mobile operators introduced more lucrative margins on electronic prepaid vouchers last summer, the move signaled the beginning of the end for producers of logistically cumbersome and environmentally wasteful scratch cards. And EVS, which operates systems for the distribution of electronic products and services, reports that wholesalers and retailers alike have since come flocking in.
"Sales of scratch cards are particularly difficult to predict, which leads to a misfit of supply to demand. This tends to cause losses on potential income for retailers, wholesalers and mobile operators alike," says Christophe Michalak, managing director of EVS Polska, the local subsidiary of EVS GmbH Germany. Indeed, he calculates that better coverage of consumer demand provided by electronic products over the traditional scratch card can increase sales of prepaid top-ups by 15-25 percent.
The company, founded in December 2002, was the first to set up operations in POS terminals on the local market. POS terminals, installed in kiosks, small shops and convenience stores, and connected digitally to wholesalers and/or providers, enable retailers to sell mobile top-up time and other electronic products, without the need for physical tokens.
EVS, which started commercial operations last August, has recently broken even on turnovers which went from zero to zł.7.04 million by the end of May this year. EVS, which is active on several Western European markets, has also invested zł.228,000 (€50,000) in the Czech market and is currently negotiating with potential partners in Hungary and Slovakia.
On other markets, such as those in Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Ireland, EVS is bringing in additional products, and EVS Polska is not planning to stop at prepaid mobile services here, either. In Ireland, for example, the company services prepaid subscriptions for newspapers, Michalak explains, which are services that would also make the company a more attractive business partner to many of its potential clients, namely wholesale distributors to kiosks and petrol stations.
"From all the services we've looked at, POS terminals are the fastest growing," says Michele Scanlon, director of research and consultancy at Informa Telecoms. Neverthless, EVS could still face competition from companies that offer electronic payment systems through ATMs as well as POS terminals, as, she reveals, "combined portfolios have the attraction of a one-stop-shop to providers."
E-Pay, the European subsidiary of U.S.-based Euronet, for example, which controls large chunks of the northern European ATM payment market and which has been on the Polish ATM software market since 1996, introduced its own newly acquired POS technology in this country in August 2002. Robert Koński, the country manager for Poland, says he's never even heard of EVS.
As regards control of the market for POS terminals, though, the two companies are actually neck and neck with each other, with around 1,400 terminals each, over 50 percent of which are in kiosks. Both plan to add around 3,000 more, which would then account for about 50 percent of the potential market. And there is much ingrained custom to fight against, as mobile penetration in Poland is still only around 40 percent of the population (in the neighboring Czech Republic, for example, that figure is 80 percent) and of that 40 percent, more than half are prepaid phones.
Despite the global might of Euronet, even Koński admits that the company's European subsidiary is still learning the ropes of the kiosk-driven POS market in this country. And Michalak, at least, sees that as giving EVS Polska a distinct advantage. "We have four years of experience in the POS market," he says, "whereas E-Pay is fairly new to the business."
