Monitise plc (LSE: MONI.L) is the global trusted enabler in Mobile Money solutions, with proven technology and expertise to enable financial institutions and other service providers to offer a wide range of mobile banking, payments and commerce services to their customers in developed, emerging and hybrid territories.

With a global reach as well as partnerships with many UK high street banks, Monitise provides services to more than 250 financial institutions in the United States and has a global partnership with Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) to deliver its services to more than 1.9 billion card-holders. In June 2011, Monitise announced a new five-year commercial agreement with Visa to accelerate the execution of Visa's global strategy to provide the next generation of payments solutions. Monitise has been identified by the WEF as a ‘Technology Pioneer’ on the basis of its ability to enable societal change on a global scale.

Key Information

Founded in 2002 by Alastair Lukies and Steve Atkinson
Website: www.monitise.com
De-merged from Morse and Floated on AIM in June 2007
Market Cap: £590m
Total revenues (2013): £27.8m
Over 2 billion transactions per year
More than 20 million registered customers
Global Reach: Offices and operations in the UK, US, Asia Pacific, India and Africa

Alastair Lukies - CEO & Co-founder

Alastair is Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Monitise. Incredibly charismatic and a great leader of people, Alastair Lukies has built not only a great firm but played a significant role in the creation of an industry - "mobile money." Monitise is his third entrepreneurial venture. He was co-founder of epolitix.com, the e-portal for Westminster, and prior to that he built and sold a conference company in Malaysia.

Ecosystem Economics™

Recognising that companies will expand when more people are able to participate and share the economics, Monetise have organised their business model so that its offering is in the interest of all of its natural allies. Alastair demonstrated his understanding of the importance of natural allies/the network effect when he was quoted saying: “If mobile banking is going to work, it has to work for everyone -  the telco, the bank, and the individual who gets a lower cost of capital.” Monetise established itself as a world leader by aligning itself with the banks, mobile operators and payments schemes. Monetise found the change agent inside of the big banks, and made them a hero for adopting Monitise.

As a digital David, Alistair was able to demonstrate to the Goliaths, the banks and the telco companies what the advantages of embracing part of the Monitise ecosystem would be, which included ample digital revenue streams and the opportunity to be at the forefront of innovation in the emerging mobile money space.

Monetise were also able to secure their position as the global leader in mobile banking and payments by working hard to enable the mobile carriers and retail banks by working with them, rather than threatening to disrupt them. Models which do not support an ecosystem approach to embracing all shareholders – in this case the banks, retailers, and others, often struggle. Monitise worked collaboratively.

Once lots of reputable services are signed up, it becomes more worthwhile for customers to adopt the system and that then encourages more services to sign up, utilising the all importance network effect that is key to the successful implementation of Ecosystem Economics™. They are also constantly innovating to maintain their market leading position and are soon to launch Simply Tap, a pioneering, common sense approach to buying products and services via a mobile phone.