Today's press release from an overly-optimistic company who probably doesn't know what they're talking about comes from Morgan Beaumont, a "premier [provider] of Stored Value and Prepaid Card Solutions in the United States. The company has developed the SIRE Network(TM), a secure, reliable, point of sale (POS) and PC based software platform that connects retail merchants with multiple stored value/prepaid card processors and issuing banks, in addition to private transaction networks and IVR and CRM technology."
According to this press release, the company, "today announced it has signed an exclusive agreement with Competisys Corporation to provide prepaid cards from Discover® Network to the Mexican American Grocer's Association (MAGA) channel of over 120,000 grocery stores. As part of the agreement, all of the 120,000 MAGA stores that participate will also become members of the SIRE Network. Additionally, Competisys has signed an exclusive agreement with Morgan Beaumont to offer SIRE Network services, stored value cards and other financial services via their self service kiosks."
So 120,000 kiosks to be deployed to Mexican grocery stores. Right.
Aside from the insane infrastructure issues (everything from power to network connectivity -- trust me, we've been working in Latin America for a while), the very concept of deploying 120,000 of anything is simply a gigantic challenge. I don't know how they normally do their kiosk deals, but if you figure that an average kiosk only costs 1,000 -- which is probably a very low estimate -- we're still looking at a $120 million tab to get the machines deployed, quite possibly making this the largest kiosk network ever deployed.
According to this press release, the company, "today announced it has signed an exclusive agreement with Competisys Corporation to provide prepaid cards from Discover® Network to the Mexican American Grocer's Association (MAGA) channel of over 120,000 grocery stores. As part of the agreement, all of the 120,000 MAGA stores that participate will also become members of the SIRE Network. Additionally, Competisys has signed an exclusive agreement with Morgan Beaumont to offer SIRE Network services, stored value cards and other financial services via their self service kiosks."
So 120,000 kiosks to be deployed to Mexican grocery stores. Right.
Aside from the insane infrastructure issues (everything from power to network connectivity -- trust me, we've been working in Latin America for a while), the very concept of deploying 120,000 of anything is simply a gigantic challenge. I don't know how they normally do their kiosk deals, but if you figure that an average kiosk only costs 1,000 -- which is probably a very low estimate -- we're still looking at a $120 million tab to get the machines deployed, quite possibly making this the largest kiosk network ever deployed.
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