Shaun Bonett of Precision Group. Photo / Precision Group
Shaun Bonett of Precision Group. Photo / Precision Group
A company owned by an Australian billionaire, which also owns an Auckland shopping centre, has struck a deal with a global payments giant.
Shaun Bonett's Precision Group, which owns the Shore City shopping centre at Takapuna, has announced a new deal for its digital gift card business Prezzee, entering aglobal partnership with Mastercard.
Prezzee is 85 per cent owned by Bonett, who last decade bought the North Shore mall, saying it had a bright future.
"Auckland's strong economy, property market stability and Takapuna's superb inner metropolitan location and affluent population base were the initial appeals in buying Shore City," he said.
In 2016, Precision made its first New Zealand purchase, buying from Aviva Investors Asia Property fund. The deal for about $90m was funded by Bank of China. The 14,000sq m mall on a 1.2ha site has a two-level Farmers and 74 shops.
Now, Precision has announced the Mastercard deal.
It said Prezzee was on track to achieve more than A$1b in gift card sales in the current 2022 financial year, taking a percentage share of the gift card value as revenue, a company statement said.
The New Zealand gift card market is worth around US$876m for this calendar year. Of that about US$311m is for digital, growing at about 14 per cent annually, it said.
Prezzee says it is "on track to achieve over $1b in transactions for FY22 with revenues of A$55m. Prezzee has more than 8000 corporate customers including QBE, Coca Cola, Allianz, Atlassian and Samsung, and will send more than 16m gift cards in FY22.
Shore City, owned by Precision Group. Photo / Steven McNicholl
"The global gift-card market is worth approximately US$500b, growing at about 15 per cent in the next five years, with half of that in the US. Prezzee is seeing a growth trajectory that will put it among the world's fastest-growing digital payments companies," that business said from Australia this week.
"Prezzee has comfortably surpassed unicorn status," the company's chief executive Tony Karp said. That is based on revenue and profit projections from the 16 million Prezzee gift cards projected to be sent by companies and consumers by June 2022.
Prezzee was only founded in 2015 but wants to capture at least 10 per cent of the US market within three years. It now has five offices employing around 150 people.
It says it wants to be in Canada by Christmas and then France and Germany next year. Management claim they can be established in a new market in about two weeks given the ease its technology can be adapted or bolted on to existing financial institution products.
In 2016 when Precision bought the Auckland mall, it indicated plans.
Bonett of Precision. Photo / supplied
"As a private business, Precision Group has a strong track record in developing and repositioning retail assets including MacArthur Central Brisbane, Adelaide Central Plaza, Pran Central in Melbourne and the ongoing repositioning of its most recent 2015 purchase, Chevron Renaissance on the Gold Coast," it said then.
Bonett said at the time: "I would like to bring Australian retailers there. There's a great opportunity to bring new retailers to Shore City. It would also be good to introduce a high-end food offering," he said.
"My primary desire in the next three to five years is to create one of Auckland's best shopping centres. Once that has been done, there's the opportunity to put a residential tower on top. There's no reason why that will not be explored."
Precision was founded in 1994 and now owns and manages11 properties valued at A$1b+ here and in Australia.
The company says it has a "major financial interest in Prezzee and Skyfii, an Australian ASX listed software technology company with international presence in the United Kingdom, North America, South America and South Africa".
Bonett is a non-executive director of iSelect which is an ASX-listed consumer comparison service. He is also managing director of Lenders Direct which is a private equity finance company and he is the chairman and non-executive director of Litigation Lending Services, a litigation funding solutions provider.
