Page 20 - bne_Tech_02_2021

NIBs
February 2021 www.intellinews.com I Page 20
brothers Bogdan and Cristian Bilegan, plans to launch the products it produces in Bistrita internationally, with the first country targeted being Germany.
Datacor ended the year 2020 with revenues of RON45mn (€9.2mn), a slight increase compared to the previous year.
"We ended 2020 on profit, and, with the international launch of Datacor products, we estimate a 15% increase in turnover by the end of this year. We are preparing the launch in Germany," said Bogdan Bilegan, CEO of Datacor. The company has completed the construction of a fibre-optic plant in Bistrita and scheduled the start of production for the first quarter of 2021.
The factory in Bistrita will produce parts for fibre- optic networks, which will be used mainly in the telecommunications industry, both for fibre-to- the-home networks and for 5G networks or local LAN networks. The company aims to target the European market, in a context in which western countries are planning massive investments in this area.
"We want to promote our products in European countries, because Germany and Austria will invest heavily. France will also have investments of about €290mn in fibre-to-the-home networks. We see in Germany that the development of
fibre optic networks and other investments in infrastructure is a strategic direction," said the Datacor CEO last September when announcing the opening of the plant.
Poland’s mPay to offer in-app investment fund purchases
Polish mobile payment system operator mPay
is going to offer retail clients an opportunity to buy into investment funds via a mobile app, after taking over the brokerage house of Bank BPS, which groups Poland’s 325 cooperative banks, mPay said on February 1.
mPay has so far offered mobile payment services such as purchasing train and bus tickets, paying parking fees or admission to cinemas. Taking over Bank BPS’s brokerage house – named DM Bank BPS - will allow the company to expand its offer to in-app retail distribution of investment fund units, mPay’s deputy CEO Daniel Scigala told newspaper Puls Biznesu.
DM Bank BPS had already been a distributor of four investment funds, the bank’s own, as well as Skarbiec, Generali Investments, and PZU.
mPay is hoping that at least some of 150,000 active users from the total 457,000 registered accounts on its mobile payment system will be encouraged to buy into investment funds thanks to easy in-app purchases.
That could prove a boon for DM Bank BPS,
which currently is a very small player with less than 1% of brokerage accounts and 0.8% of session turnover on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, according to Puls Biznesu.
That said, mPay is not yet going to offer mobile stock purchases. “Our customers are more likely to be interested in simpler and relatively safer [investment] products,” Scigala said.