QUISK, a new electronic payment system, is set to launch in Jamaica with the assistance of its local partner Advanced Integrated Services (AIS) — after more than five years of research and US$1 million in investment.

“Our platform caters to the unbanked, the underbanked and those who now have a regular bank account,” Douglas Halsall, chairman and chief executive of AIS, told the Jamaica Observer on Monday. “We are a much more comprehensive solution than mobile money.”

Halsall explained that Quisk account holders will be able to make most payments — utilities, instalment loans, premiums, mortgages, taxes — directly from their phone. “Like cash, there should be no payment too small to make with Quisk,” he said.

The first bank to get Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) approval for the product was NCB in August 2014, but more financial institutions are in the pipeline.

“We are in the pilot phase with NCB and will commence with VMBS, First Heritage, Lasco Financial and others, as soon as their applications have been approved by BOJ,” he said. The four institutions “have two million accounts between them. We can start with those and it will give us a running head start”.

The company has also increased its employment. “We have added five additional, highly skilled professionals, and anticipate another 10 over the next three years,” Halsall said.

AIS is already planning for its expansion into the Caribbean.

“We are in the process of speaking to central banks and other potential partners outside of Jamaica,” Halsall said. “This process will go into high gear as soon as Jamaica has been rolled out.”

AIS plans to take Quisk to “21 countries in the Caribbean… English, Spanish, French and Dutch”, Halsall said.

And the investment for those markets should be at least as large as in Jamaica. “We expect a similar or larger investment for roll-out over the Caribbean.”

“AIS has done a wonderful job in creating the market,” Quisk Chairman and Chief Executive Steve Novak told the Business Observer in a recent interview.

“Quisk is cash without a wallet,” Novak said. “Banks are our customers.”

A Quisk account “is likened to a chequing or savings account”, according to Novak.

Customers will be able to basically withdraw or pay cash using a PIN and a unique numerical identifier which will be their own mobile phone number.

“You have a really powerful computer in your phone.” But for many people, these phones are merely “status symbols” as the user doesn’t access its Internet capabilities.

“Our system is totally agnostic — it doesn’t matter if the phone is smart or not. It just needs SMS messaging,” Novak said.

“A plain old feature phone,” is all that is needed, he said — unlike more complex and state-of-the-art products on the market such as Apple Pay or Google wallet.

The high rate of mobile penetration along with a large percentage of unbanked persons were key factors in choosing Jamaica as a prime market for the new product.

“In Jamaica, there are three million people with 3.5 million phones,” he said, while at the same time there are only one million individual retail bank accounts.

“So one-third of the population” is banked, he said.

There are more than 200 mobile payment systems around the globe, Novak said, 51 per cent of which are in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Virtually all of them are driven by mobile networks,” Novak said. A prime example is the very successful M-Pesa in Kenya which is owned by Safaricom, a mobile operator that controls 80 per cent of the market. M-Pesa is not open to other mobile providers, he said.

“So using mobile phones as a device to promote the use of mobile money is a huge emerging trend,” Novak said. “Smart phones are now 50 per cent of global phones. Globally 85 per cent of retail transactions are paid in cash.”

“We have constructed an open loop solution,” he said. “So whatever your mobile provider, it doesn’t matter.”

Jamaica is the first major market for the new platform, but Quisk currently has a presence in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East, and is also looking to launch in Jordan and other markets. “A number of other things are cooking.”

Prior to setting up Quisk, Halsall and others were involved with another Silicon Valley start-up called CyberSource. That company was recently sold to Visa for US$2 billion. “CyberSource is part of our DNA,” Novak said.