LONDON—Agencies from the GlobalCom PR Network have landed a multi-market PR assignment that aims to boost the global rollout of new mobile business platform ZNAP.

MPayMe, the Hong Kong company behind ZNAP, has hired GlobalCom to lead corporate and B2B PR duties for ZNAP, which provides retail merchants with mobile payment solutions.

In an increasingly competitive mobile money market, GlobalCom will seek to differentiate ZNAP, which launched earlier this year, by portraying rival platforms as limited in scope.

The company will also need to continue convincing merchants and consumers of the merits of mobile payment, following a recent survey it conducted which reveals that just 10 percent of UK smartphone users have used mobile wallets.

“The products currently being offered often have too many limitations and don’t offer the value or the utility to drive merchant and consumer adoption,” said MPayMe European CEO Hooman Mazaheri when announcing the survey results last month. “When there are already well-established and traditional ways to pay, i.e. cash and cards, what’s the benefit of introducing a rival if it doesn’t come with added value?”

Instead of focusing solely on payments, said Mazaheri, the industry needs to address merchant and customer needs. “Yet another method of payment isn’t enough unless it comes with add-ons such as data and loyalty scheme management for merchants, and a relevant, versatile and wider-reaching customer experience for consumers.”

The UK's CCgroup will lead the account, supported by GlobalCom sibling firms PR people in Hong Kong and Jennifer Connelly Public Relations in the US. The assignment covers EMEA, Asia-Pacific and North America.

“ZNAP has the potential to shake up the world of mobile commerce,” said Richard Fogg, managing director of CCgroup, GlobalCom’s UK tech lead. “ZNAP has a genuinely unique solution that is, unlike most of its competitors, finally of use to merchants and consumers alike. ZNAP’s ambition is to challenge the market by creating a new category of mobile services for merchants.

“We are an ambitious brand and we wanted an ambitious agency,” added David Pipe, CMO of ZNAP. “From the start, it was clear that GlobalCom understood what we wanted to achieve and had the ideas and experience to take us there.”