News from the Wire

Semafone achieves record growth

Tuesday, May 26, 2015 — 12:25:42 (EDT)

Guildford, Surrey, B.C., May 26, 2015 - Semafone® has announced a record trading year, achieving a 38% increase in revenues to £5.3m and doubling its overseas business to £2.5m.

Semafone, which provides secure payment technology for call centres, reached profitability for the first time with a £68,000 net profit in spite of significant investment in its new hosted solutions and one off legal costs for defending its intellectual property. Alongside its UK patent, the company was successful in its application for the same protection in the US and will be looking to extend this to new markets and technologies. Semafone now has clients in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Denmark, USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Africa as well as in the UK.

In this financial year Semafone achieved certification for ISO 270001:2013, making it the only IT security vendor to have achieved four of the leading secure payment accreditations. The company announced a global agreement with BT and also created two new senior positions. Iain Johnston, formerly a client of Semafone during his time at Sky, took on the role of chief operating officer and Iain Sutcliffe joined the company from Avaya to become director of channel sales.

“This has been a fantastic year for Semafone,” said Tim Critchley, Semafone CEO. “We have grown both at home and overseas and we are delighted to have been ranked in this year’s Sunday Times Business SME Export Track list. It’s an exciting time for the company - as consumers start to become more aware and educated about the dangers of card breaches, the need for secure payment solutions increases worldwide - we look forward to investing further in our technology and growing our overseas business in 2015.”

About Semafone

Semafone provides software to contact centres so they can take secure credit and debit card payments over the phone. Using Semafone’s patented payment method, card data is transmitted directly from the customer’s telephone keypad to the bank. This takes the contact centre out of scope of PCI DSS regulations, removing the threat of fraud and its associated reputational damage.

Semafone has achieved the four leading security & payment accreditations: ISO 27001:2013, PA DSS certification for its payment solution, PCI-DSS Level 1 Service Provider and is a Visa level 1 merchant agent.

The company was founded in 2009 and serves a wide range of industry sectors including financial services, media, retail, utilities, travel and tourism and the public sector. Customers include Virgin Holidays, Aviva Canada, TalkTalk, Nemo Personal Finance, Sky and Yorkshire Water. BT offers a hosted version of Semafone’s technology - BT Secure Contact. Semafone has recently completed a series B round of investment - major investors include Octopus Investments and BGF (Business Growth Fund).

Further information about Semafone is available at www.semafone.com .

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Source: Company press release.