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Under the agreement, Alphyra, who already sells its prepaid mobile products on behalf of Telia, will now gain access to the remaining two cellular operators in the Swedish market; Comviq and Vodafone, together with the mobile virtual network operators, Tango and Djuice.
"We're delighted to partner with Tele Jack in the conversion of their existing paper-based merchants to our electronic solution," said John Nagle, chief executive officer of Alphyra Group. "This development gives us significant additional reach across the Swedish market."
The Dublin-based company will retain ownership and control over the host computer and terminal network infrastructure while Tele Jack will co-ordinate the electronic conversion of its 3,500 merchants across Sweden. Alphyra will use a network of terminals in stores to credit mobile phone customers' accounts electronically instead of using paper vouchers.
Despite the seemingly positive news however, investors reacted poorly to the announcement and Alphyra shares were down around three percent in Dublin before lunch to EUR2.30 in light trading.
In February of this year, Alphyra reported a pre-tax loss of EUR31.5 million for the eight months to the end of December 2001 compared with a profit of EUR479,000 for the previous 12-month period. After the results, the company's share price fell by nearly forty percent to a low of EUR1.40.
However, less than a week later the shares re-bounded by over 60 percent to EUR2.20 after it announced a bill payment deal with Powergen, which will allow customers of the UK utilities provider make payments towards their electricity, gas and telephone bills through Alphyra's terminal network.
Worldwide Alphyra, previously called ITG, employs around 600 with 40 percent of its workforce located in Ireland.
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