Small-Cap Investor Forum

[MissionIR]

Net Element, Inc. (NETE) Setting Up the Field for Serious Revenue Growth via Mobile Payment Processing Expansion in Russia, CIS

The number of iPhone users in the U.S. alone is projected around 63.2M this year and with the new Apple Pay NFC (near-field communications) payment system going live on October 20th, supported by payment giants American Express, MasterCard and Visa, the multi-billion dollar mobile payments and transactional services sector now appears to be hotter than ever. Alternative payment methods are set to easily overtake credit/debit cards globally according to renowned sector analyst WorldPay’s second edition of their extremely rigorous Global Guide to Alternative Payments, which shows that online buying using alternative methods will be as much as 59% of the space by just 2017.

E-wallets will become more dominant than cards over the same interval, with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin also playing an increasingly prominent driver role in the decline of debt/credit card usage. E-wallet payment processing was about $295B in 2012 alone, a figure set to rise a staggering 461% by 2017 to around $1,656B according to WorldPay. China will be an increasingly prominent force as well in the underlying dynamics, with 44% or more of transactions in China currently using e-wallets and the huge success of the Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) IPO telegraphing the future presence the company’s Alipay service, which represents more than 30% of all such payments.

It takes a shrewd company with considerable experience to make it in this game today and one such company is Net Element (NASDAQ: NETE). NETE is a tech-driven mobile payment and transaction services specialist with solid roots in the RUS Fed and CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) via the company’s global processing provider subsidiary, TOT Group, Inc., which includes Inc. Magazine’s top pick for fastest growing company in 2012, Unified Payments. Also among the NETE umbrella is Aptito, a next-gen cloud-based visual POS (point of sale) payments platform developer (focused on iPad deployments). Aptito has an array of exciting digital menu and mobile ordering offerings that are seamlessly hooked into social media platforms like Facebook, right from inside the software itself. Aptito even offers a mobile POS system, mPOS, via a cloud-based app.

Net Element provides anywhere/anytime mobile payment solutions and value-added transactional services, as well as marketing solutions that leverage technologies like product review and recommendation engine dovetailing. The company even provides customers with comprehensive data-driven business analytics to make sense of it all. Another one of NETE’s companies, TOT Group division, TOT Money, is already ranked as the top SMS text messaging content provider in Russia by the country’s second largest telecom operator, Beeline. The TOT Money platform is directly integrated into billing systems of major mobile operators worldwide and offers websites a way to connect with customers, giving them an easy payment option.

NETE is in a unique position to help expand the still underdeveloped Russian/CIS mobile payment sector, with global development centers, as well as key, high-level business relationships throughout the region. CEO of NETE, Oleg Firer, who has over a decade of experience in the payments industry, with a particular emphasis on payments-based tech and M&A work, recently sat down with strategic communications and IR/PR firm MissionIR to cover the waterfront (http://nete.missionir.com/nete/interview.html).

Firer went into not only the diverse experience and capabilities of NETE’s management team, but a series of 2014 milestones that clearly detail the company’s path to success. Among the highlights are a spate of multi-million dollar financings the company has recently secured, completion of a $16M debt exchange transaction, as well as trimming of the company’s overall architecture via some non-core asset divestments. NETE has set itself up nicely for accelerating revenue growth moving forward and Firer was keen to point out in the interview how NETE is primed for some serious expansion in Russia/CIS, noting in particular the recent $11M financing from Russia’s biggest private bank, Alfa-Bank.

Acquire additional data on Net Element at www.NetElement.com