Azimo Mobile Payments Makes a Push on Hong Kong

Pursuing the Asian financial technology (fintech) market is an excellent example of a high-risk, high-reward strategy. It’s a busy market, but one with lots of potential new customers. That’s likely what Azimo was thinking, as it tipped us off about plans to branch out into Hong Kong.

Azimo, one of the biggest digital money transfer operations in Europe, recently moved into Hong Kong, which opened up some significant new market potential for the company. Now, customers in Hong Kong will be able to use the Azimo network to send money to 180 nations and in 80 different currencies. Said customers will also enjoy some of the lowest fees to make said transfers around.

Azimo is particularly looking to make a splash with the Filipino market, as it represents the largest foreign community in Hong Kong at over 180,000 strong. Naturally, it’s also eager to get in on the Chinese and Indian markets, as well as landing a bit of Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation on Earth.

Hong Kong’s population, proximity to major markets, and the recent introduction of the Faster Payment System—despite some of its recent issues—made it an especially attractive play to Azimo.

Azimo CEO Michael Kent noted “…Our service will offer customers a fast, safe and convenient way to send money from their mobile phones to loved ones back home - at a significantly lower cost than other competitors. Azimo looks forward to serving new customers in the territory and to taking a share of Hong Kong’s multi-billion pound remittance market.”

There’s certainly a lot of reason to like Hong Kong as a market for fintech, but that’s part of the problem, too. A market this attractive has already pulled a lot of interest, and now, the market is fairly well stuffed. Worse, Azimo’s getting here rather late to the party, and so will have to try and break market away from dissatisfied customers. That’s likely to prove difficult going forward, but if Azimo can get a particularly attractive prospect behind it—which it might with its range of currencies and target countries—it could clean up.

It will be interesting to see how far Azimo can take this, and this upstart company certainly won’t be taken out quietly, if at all.