Netopia System processes 36 percent more SMS payments in H1

Romanian provider of SMS marketing services Netopia System saw the number of SMS transactions processed by its mobilPay service increase by 36 percent year-on-year to 360,000 in H1. Despite this growth, the company saw the average SMS payment halve to EUR 3-4 from EUR 7 in H1 2009. Netopia's founder and CEO Antonio Eram expects this year's total number of mobilPay SMS transactions to rise by 30 percent over the half of million transactions processed in 2009. As for the value of the total transactions processed by the company in 2010, Eram forecasts it will reach EUR 3.85 million, that is ten percent over last year's value. At present, Netopia System manages 80 percent of the total SMS payments made in Romania. In 2010, the country's SMS payments market is estimated to reach a value of EUR 4.8 million and a total number of 800,000 SMS payments. According to Netopia System, there are 720 websites on the local market that monetise their content using SMS payments, that is 120 more websites than at the end of 2009. The majority of SMS payments Netopia processed in H1 were related to online games, software licences, access to online services as well as the purchase of various products. Among the changes observed by Netopia in the local SMS payments market in H1 was a rise in the SMS insurance segment. The volume of informative and advertising messages sent to Romanians by local companies via Netopia's web2sms service increased by 40 percent to 21 million messages in H1. Eram forecasts that the total number of messages sent via its web2sms service to rise by 55 percent year-on-year to 54 million messages in 2010. In 2010, Netopia System expects to handle the distribution of 60 percent of the total informative and advertising messages sent to Romanians by local companies via SMS, which is estimated to reach a total approximately 90 million messages.