Investment allows Actus hire new staff

WICKLOW-BASED Actus Mobile Solutions is hiring 11 new staff after closing an initial angel round of investment which the company said has put “over €200,000” at its disposal to deliver its products to interested customers around the world.

The company has developed and licensed mobile technologies to enable companies to interact with consumers. Its two main products are Point Inside, an indoor navigation tool it has secured an exclusive European licence for, and M:Cypher, a communications platform that enables transactions to be completed securely on a mobile.

The combination of the two technologies is proving extremely attractive to venues such as shopping centres and airports, said Actus managing director Pat Fox, who is the former head of marketing and communications with Quinnsworth and Tesco. He said the company will announce a number of high-profile customers in the coming months.

Using the example of airports, Tony Burke, chief technology officer of Actus, said there is huge potential for venues to increase revenues using the products to create a mobile commerce platform. He gives the example of an airport allowing passengers to book priority security clearance while standing in a queue or booking parking on the way to the airport from within a smartphone app.

“Most of the solutions on the market at the moment throw you out to a website, which is not ideal on a mobile,” said Mr Burke, a former Microsoft executive. “We do everything within the app.”

While Point Inside runs on Android and Apple smartphones, Mr Burke said M:Cypher can run in a Java environment which means it can be made available for about 95 per cent of handsets in use in Europe.

Actus was formed in early 2010 and following a merger with SMC Technologies acquired the M:Cypher product which had been five years in development.

Mr Burke said one of the advantages that Actus offers over apps such as Foursquare is that it can integrate apps with retailers own loyalty systems.