SafeCharge (AIM: SCH), the partner of choice for businesses who demand more from payments technology, today announced a strong performance for the year 2018 with a revenue growth of 24% to US$138.5 million. The processed volume increased by 45% year-on-year to $13.9 billion, up from $9.6 billion in 2017.

SafeCharge’s organic growth was driven by a vision to deliver innovation, flexibility and efficiency to customers, leveraging cutting-edge payments technology to address the needs of those businesses looking for an open and reliable payment service provider. In 2018, the Group delivered on its strategy to enter new verticals and markets, by expanding its office teams in Asia and Mexico to capitalise on local opportunities, as well as strengthening its presence in the travel and retail sectors.

The company successfully launched a number of significant new Tier 1 customers including the global ride sharing company Gett, the online retail platform The Level Group, the national Danish gaming operator Danske Spil and the Italian licensed gaming and betting operator Snai. SafeCharge also started cooperation with World Duty Free at LHR to implement the acceptance of WeChat Pay for Chinese visitors.

Charted the course for global reach

• SafeCharge drove the acceptance of Alipay and WeChat Pay across the UK and grew its payments methods portfolio providing a choice of over 150 Alternative Payment Methods (APMs) integrated alongside the traditional credit and debit card formats.
• Delivered solutions for merchants willing to expand in North America, for the US market with local card acquiring as well as the popular ACH online bank payment method eCheck and Interac for the Canadian market. 
• Grew its office presence in Asia with the opening of a second office in Shenzhen (China) and LATAM with an office in Mexico City (Mexico).

Capitalised on Omni-Channel for the best customer experience

• SafeCharge is one of the only player in the market able to provide merchants with a truly omnichannel solution connecting all sales channels to the SafeCharge Payments Engine, improving the way merchants process and manage payments across all sales channels through one interface.
• Bringing convenience and ease of new generation mobile payments in-store, SafeCharge created the Point of Sale app to accept QR code based payments such as Alipay and WeChat Pay 

Brought innovative solutions to the market

• With its Native+ Payment Engine, SafeCharge is bringing a new approach to payments by offering both an advanced proprietary technology as well as access to a broad range of partners. In 2018 it launched Reconciliation Manager and recently Identity Manager, two very innovative products leveraging the company’s unique experience and expertise in regulated markets payments, now broadening the scope of their initial customers interest to mainstream e-commerce merchants such as Gett.
• The company is continuing to build on the latest technology innovations by including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to further develop the efficiency of its solutions.

“2018 has been an excellent year for SafeCharge. We successfully recruited a number of talented senior managers from well-established businesses in the payments sector to win and manage sustainable, high quality business in both existing and target verticals and geographies” explained David Avgi, CEO, SafeCharge. “We successfully diversified our customer base, enhanced our technology platform and invested substantially in new products and offerings. We remain fully committed to capitalising on the latest market trends and bringing best-in-class technology to our customers, enabling them to embrace the fast commerce transformation, enhance their customers’ experiences and ultimately grow their revenues”.