LinQpay, Inc. a leading Mobile Payment and Global Payment Services company, and Internet Payment Solutions (IPS) (HK) a subsidiary of Universal Technologies Holdings Ltd. (UTH) the leading Chinese payment service company, today announced they have signed a definitive agreement to establish a joint venture that will provide several mobile phone based payment services for the Chinese market.
The new service will combine LinQpay's leading mobile phone based payment services with IPS's Chinese payment platform, valuable client base and market leading position within China. Through the joint venture, LinQpay and IPS will create a full-featured mobile phone-based m-commerce platform that will provide both mobile extensions to IPS e-wallet and payment platform as well as complete out-of-the box m-commerce solutions.
The LinQpay and IPS joint venture creates a full-featured m-commerce service for both IPS's current e-wallet and its payment platform within China. LinQpay's mobile phone based JAVA and SMS messaging services will extend IPS's current e-wallet to all mobile phone consumers. Additionally, IPS will extend its current market leading payment platform with LinQpay's complete m-commerce services. The solution allows complete out-of-the box mobile websites, m-commerce and m-fulfillment to small and medium size companies throughout China. Large organizations can seamlessly integrate current mobile websites into LinQpay's m-commerce services. The combination of IPS Chinese payment platform and LinQpay's mobile solutions give the joint venture a powerful and complete m-commerce platform.
"With the rapid growth of the Chinese mobile phone and payment processing spaces, we see all indicators pointing toward explosive growth in Chinese m-commerce," said James Byler, Chief Executive Officer, LinQpay, Inc. "With IPS's brand and dominant market share within China coupled with LinQpay's mobile technology and know-how, we are creating a m-commerce platform that will be trusted and widely available to mobile phone users in China. We are confident through this venture, we will make significant contribution to the growth of m-commerce in China."
"We believe IPS' e-wallet being accessed by mobile phones will open up a huge potential market in Chinese m-commerce. This drastically extends our payment gateway business from the internet users to the mobile phone users in China, especially those in the rural areas," said Sunny Cheung, Vice President of IPS. "The joint venture will not only bring us a mobile technology platform in China, but also connects IPS' clients to LinQpay's worldwide networks in the future."
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The LinQpay and IPS joint venture supports the companies' respective strategies to further enable and support m-commerce within China's business community. The service will be co-branded as IPS LinQpay, and is expected to be available to Chinese mobile users in Q2 2008.