Headquartered at Tirana, Albania and founded in the year 2010, EasyPay is an Albanian FinTech company, born with an idea to offer customers an ‘easy’ to ‘pay’ concept from their mobile phone. This inclusive e-wallet platform allows people to make real-time payments by saving their time and money while reducing discomfort. On the other hand, people can make use of its mobile application to pay for over 40 services including utility bills, police fines, education fees, internet, top-ups, e-commerce etc.
In addition to this, customers can credit their EasyPay ewallet either with cash or cashless using their mobile phone or to one of the company’s 350 agents who are present across the country. By providing such safe and inclusive top up alternatives, both the banked and the non-banked population can have access to digital financial services and make real-time online or mobile payments. Recently, the company has entered into the remittance business and partnered with Ria Money Transfer, the second largest Money Transfer Operator in the world. This partnership has allowed EasyPay to offer competitive money transfers to the low and middle-income households in the Albanian market.
Apart from providing conventional money transfers through Ria Money Transfer, the Albanian customers who live and work abroad can directly pay their family’s utility bills using the EasyPay mobile application. This way, these customers who send money to their families for bill payments can directly pay for these bills comfortably from their homes. This benefit is offered to specific audiences; those who prefer digital channels with a simplified procedure, where EasyPay eliminates at least two steps to make the process easier in order to reduce their time and cost.
Driving Financial Innovations
During the last eight years, experts of EasyPay, operating in the Albanian market have learnt never to underestimate the local culture and mentality. Hence, they have been constantly focusing on educating the population about its products and services apart from finding the right business model for success. EasyPay found itself lucky to be the first operator to enter into this sector in Albania, right in time when there was a huge gap in the market that needed to be filled. This led the company towards success as one of the leading fintech companies in the region, but this would have never happened without the company’s talented and passionate team of young Albanians who are truly driving the financial innovation breakthrough in Albania.
It is a result of their hard work that EasyPay is now recognized as a leading FinTech company in Europe, which has also reflected through its ranking as one of the Top 3 Fintech companies for Financial Inclusion in Europe, awarded by the European Fintech Awards 2017. In the year 2015, it has been awarded as the Best ICT Company in Albania, by the Albanian Government as well. These achievements were also admired by the international and local media companies such as The Banker, and they invited EasyPay for an exclusive interview in their Financial Times offices in London. EasyPay has also been featured in Let’s Talk Payments, The Fintech Times and The Paypers. Recently even Microsoft also did a dedicated coverage of EasyPay in their media channels. Further, with less than two years of operation in the remittance sector, the company has experienced a 300% YoY growth whilst its agent’s network has driven the company to gain an upper-hand among them through increasing the number of agents to 350 agents all over Albania.
Exploring Possibilities
Presently, EasyPay’s goal is to expand its services into several regions especially in Kosovo and Macedonia where it has discovered similar gaps in the market. Addressing this challenges the company is looking to offer cross-border payments in respective regions. It is also planning to provide online money transfers in Albania by viewing the present potential of the digital channels in the country. Apart from utilities and money transfers, it has recently introduced new products like tax and microloan payments which help to offer cross-selling to the remittance beneficiaries in Albania.
The Lady of Balkans
Linda Shomo, the Founder and CEO of EasyPay has an extensive executive experience of over 23 years in the IT industry. Prior to EasyPay, Linda held IT management roles in various global financial institutions such as the American Bank of Albania, First Data International etc.
Linda has received many awards and recognitions for her leading role in the financial revolution including ‘Woman of the year, 2014’ by ICT Awards and ‘Women in FinTech Powerlist 2017’ by Innovate Finance. Apart from this, Linda is also a board member of various Albanian IT, Financial and Women associations. She is also actively contributing as a mentor and jury member in the startup ecosystem and Financial Industry in Albania. She was a special invitee in the International Money Transfer, Remittances & Cross-Border Payments Conference (IMTC) 2018 for EMEA held in Brussels, where she gave an exclusive speech for Ria and EasyPay.
EasyPay
