Mobile banking and payments company Monitise is tightening its new alliance with IBM, transferring hundreds of its U.K.-based professional services staff to IBM, according to Finextra.
Under the agreement that was first announced in July, Monitise’s entire U.K. development and integration business, including some contractors, is now moving to IBM. Monitise customer contracts, client relationships, intellectual property, commitments and delivery remain unchanged. The deal cuts Monitise’s headcount of around 1000 by just over 20 percent.
Monitise’s technology will now be enabled, hosted and sold by IBM’s sales and consulting teams as a cloud offering in the business-to-business space. While the initial focus will be on financial-services customers, the partners say that they will also try to win business from mobile network operators, retailers and others.
The mobile-money company also hopes that Big Blue’s backing will substantially improve its ability to handle large projects around the world as it attempts to meet another target: 200 million users of its technology worldwide by 2018.
The deal is part of Monitise’s decision earlier this year to change its business model, ditching large upfront license fees in favor of a subscription-based system designed to cut costs for banks and boost Monitise’s own long-term income.
