The story of Pago, the application that turns paying bills into a pleasure

Pago is the application that helps us easily manage, from your phone or tablet, the payment of utility bills to over 40 suppliers, the electronic loading of prepaid cards and the payment of vignettes. In other words, it is as good as possible "at the man's house" :). He was born in 2016, the initiative of two friends, Adrian Cighi and Alexandru Popescu, the founders of Timesafe, a Romanian start-up that even attracted the attention of the BT Group and which recently invested in it, thus entering the shareholding. Although available to the general public only for about 4 months, the application is already used by over 10,000 people. Let's find out the story of Pago!

Adrian has 10 years of experience in the financial field, as an investment analyst in London, Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest. Alexandru, immediately after completing his studies in the UK, founded his own agency for design and application development, a company that also supported the development of Pago.

From idea to today's team

• "The idea of such an application I had long before and it came back every time I had to pay my monthly bills. But the key moment when we decided to do it was a conversation with Cosmin Vladimirescu, CEO of Mastercard Romania and Gabriel Ghita, Business Development Manager at Mastercard Romania, about the very high proportion of utility bills that are paid in cash in Romania – which in 2015 was over 85%. We realized that there is an opportunity here, because this statistic can not stay so long"- said Adrian Cighi, who continued: "So we put ourselves on the job to create a simple experience of paying bills with the card. From the beginning, the main objective was to bring in a single application as many utility providers as possible and thus to eliminate the repetitive steps required for monthly payments, such as searching for invoices by email or using 4-5 different online accounts in which card data are required for each invoice".

• The development of the Pago application started in February 2016, and a year ago, in November 2016, it was for the first time publicly announced, at the Internet & Mobile World event, organized in Bucharest. "The application was supported by Mastercard from the idea phase, with advice and information about the payment ecosystem in Romania. Without their help, Pago probably wouldn't have existed," Alexander tells us. The idea enjoyed the support of the software company founded by Alexandru Popescu, part of his team being part of the Pago team and which contributed with the design, the concept of user experience and with some of the development effort.

• The prototype of the application was developed in about 4 months, during which there were over 100 iterations with design changes and screens for each version.

• Then, for 6 months, the application was presented to the utility providers, after which, starting with November last year, the concept of the application was redefined to the form available today, in collaboration with the Digital Transformation and Transaction Banking departments at BT.

• Today, the Pago team is made up, besides Adrian and Alexandru, of 6 developers, 2 designers and a specialist in social media and online marketing.

Pago = Pay &Go

The name of the application is a simplification of the first chosen version, Pay&Go. And the coincidence of meaning in Spanish "payment" weighed a lot at the decision to stay with this name. The logo is a friendly one, from which we can easily understand that Pago helps us take care of ... house.

What Pago brings new in paying bills

• Those who use the application must enter only once the personal information, the payment information and those of the utility providers. Therefore, there is no need for further registration.

• Pago handles the monthly centralization of the invoice balance and sends notifications at the appearance of each invoice, but also a few days before the due date.

• Invoices can all be paid with a single payment confirmation.

• Invoices can also be paid by automatic scheduling, so they are paid on a selected day. Payment is also made with the card registered in the application, without the need for any other information or confirmations.

The biggest challenge for the Pago team and the role of BT

"The biggest challenge was trying to bring as many suppliers as possible into the application. We've had dozens of meetings and many, many email and phone discussions to reach the critical mass of providers who can make the app really useful. After 6 months we were progressing much harder than we initially expected and we realized that we have to look for an alternative, a partnership with someone who already has contractual relations with all suppliers. That's how we got to Banca Transilvania, where the idea was received very well by Omer Tetik, CEO of the bank", said Adrian. So BT, along with Mastercard, has become part of the development of the application along the way.

Messages of thanks from Pago users, the beautiful moments of every day

"The beautiful moments we have every day are the messages from those who use Pago, who thank us for the application. It is encouraging to see that our work over the last 18 months is already helping more and more users to save time every month", added Alexandru.

Some figures about Pago

• Over 10,000 users
• Over 40 utility providers. The suppliers with the most connected accounts are Orange, RDS&RCS, Enel, Electrica and Engie
• 31 invoices paid with a single confirmation is the record recorded in Pago, so far

Next steps: as many suppliers in Pago and new functionalities

Adrian gave us some information about the future plans for Pago:"We want to bring as many suppliers and as many types of payments as possible. We want to implement some new and useful functionalities, some of them came from our users through the application chat".

Pago in 3 words? Pay simply and quickly.