Mexico's Pagamobil teams up with Edenred

Mexican fintech Pagamobil and the local unit of France-based multinational Edenred announced a strategic alliance in Mexico to expand combined services to some 4mn clients.

Pagamobil is a provider of bill payment services and mobile credit charging solutions while Edenred is a multinational provider of vouchers, fleet and mobility services and prepaid service cards for companies.

The alliance is part of Edenred's "We Connect, You Win" global expansion strategy, which seeks to partner with local firms in the 45 countries where the firm has operations.

The new partners are entering a pilot test phase with operations expected to get underway in 4Q18, according to a press release.

Pilot tests will work to determine interoperability of the two platforms with Pagamobil's focus on payment options and Edenred's company services platform.

The firms said the alliance will allow payments for services such as water, pay TV, and even traffic tickets, with the Edenred vouchers.

Vouchers in Mexico are common within formal employment; however, physical vouchers, unfortunately a magnet for fraud, are historically difficult to use at retail establishments in the company, and even with electronic vouchers becoming increasingly popular, the mechanisms for using them to pay bills have been limited.

Pagamobil was created four years ago in the first generation of the accelerator program Startupbootcamp Scale FinTech Mexico City. It now has 125,000 users and alliances with major utilities, telcos and retail outlets, including Telcel, Amazon and CFE.

Edenred has 770,000 corporate clients with 44mn employees enrolled and 1.5mn merchant partners worldwide. In Latin America, it has operations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.