Hope brains behind M-Com will stay in NZ despite sale

Serge van Dam, left, with Adam Clark, chief executive of M-Com. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The founders of mobile phone banking technology company M-Com have "every intention" of building another successful Kiwi business.

M-Com announced this week that it had sold to Fortune 500 financial services technology company Fiserv for an undisclosed sum.

M-Com was set up in Auckland 11 years ago by chief executive Adam Clark and others, where it graduated from University of Auckland's Icehouse business incubator.

Its software, enabling bank customers to do things such as check their balances, transfer money and pay bills using their mobile phones, is now used by 200 financial institutions worldwide.

It has claimed a range of world firsts, such as providing the first real-time mobile credit-card payment application for the BNZ in 2002.

It initially partnered with the Nasdaq-listed Fiserv in 2008 and has an office in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States.

Head of marketing Serge van Dam said there would be no change to the organisation's structure under Fiserv's ownership, with the 80-strong Auckland office remaining intact.

He said shareholders had "done well out of this".

"We have every intention as individuals of doing this again at some point in the future.

"Rather than take 11 years to get to where we got to we'll do it in three years."

He cited the example of Rod Drury, founder of accounting software company Xero, who sold his previous company AfterMail in 2006. Drury said selling was a natural stepping stone for entrepreneurs.

"But then what's really exciting is what they do with the capital. By the time you get to the third or fourth step you've got enough capital that you can actually build a long-term business."

Entrepreneurs needed to prove themselves by doing at least one significant trade sale, he said. "I couldn't have done Xero, which we are building as a long-term business, without being recognised as doing AfterMail to a trade sale."

He said the idea that Kiwi business people were selling out was "rubbish".

Van Dam said M-Com decided to sell because it reached a point where it needed significant capital.

"In order to keep up with the pace you need to have access to capital and payment networks and a whole lot of other technologies that are peripheral to our business."

He predicted the Auckland office would double in size within the next year.

He conceded there was always the risk the American owners would eventually move operations to the US.

But Fiserv had acquired more than 20 similar companies around the world and had retained people in those locations.

He believed that as long as M-Com's intellectual capital existed in people who wanted to be in New Zealand that was where the operation would remain.