Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The announcement came as part of an impressive trading update in which the Herts-based firm revealed pre-tax profits ahead of expectations.

Trading since the half year results were announced also grew across all sectors.

PayPoint said its new terminal would be substantially rolled out by the end of the current financial year at the predicted cost of £5m, which would be depreciated over five years.

The company has also signed a new 15 year lease on its Welwyn Garden City headquarters, extending the occupation to the ground floor to help accommodate its 227 employees.

Refurbishment of the site, which includes a new higher capacity communications and processing suite, is underway with completion expected in August. At a total cost of £5m, it will be partly financed by a capital contribution from the landlord.

A further £6m will be pumped into the modernisation of its IT requirements following a company review, which had concluded that efficiency can be enhanced by developing some of the peripheral systems to introduce greater levels of automation, exception reporting and ease of operation together with the replacement of software in languages that may no longer be supported in the medium term.

Extension of PayPoint’s terminal estate, which currently stands at around 15,000 – larger than the Post Office network – starts next year when it will increase by 2,000 to 2,500 to service the increasing bill and general payment volumes and to continue the growth in our mobile top-up market share.

In the update, PayPoint revealed that bill and general payment transactions and revenues in the year to date were up 20 and 26 per cent, respectively, over the same period last year.

Mobile transactions and revenues grew 20 and 13 per cent, respectively, on the back of market share gains arising primarily from the continuing roll out of its retail network.