GCS International, a regional mobile payment platform management company, is expanding its mobile transaction platform tPago. The service is operational in the Dominican Republic and will now be available to users in Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Puerto Rico.  Currently, tPago clients can use their phones for bill payment, money transfer, retail purchases, recharges of cell phone minutes or cash advances from credit cards. So far, only users with a bank account can access tPago and link it to an m-payment service, but this service will be extended to those who do not conduct financial operations through banks through a system that allows them to charge their phones with money in shops and other authorised representatives. The platform does not require a smartphone to operate it. It will work with any device that uses GSM, and does not require Internet connection or use phone plan minutes.

tPago experienced a 57% increase in customer volume over the last year and has 300 thousand users in the Dominican Republic, approximately 16% of the unbanked population. Around 600 thousand operations are processed a month, and 10,800,000 transactions totaling USD 69 million was processed in the first 25 months of its release.

60% of the Latin American adult population does not have access to banking services but, according to World Bank figures, 90% have a cell phone. Pyramid Research predicts the number of mobile payment platform users in Latin America to increase from 18 million in 2011 to 140 million in 20015.