𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Payments firm PayPoint has announced an overhaul that it hopes will cut business costs and bring more people into shops to use its services.

The company said it had decided to simplify the business amid a challenging trading environment.

This will see it reorganised into four business units, incorporating its network services, merchant services, digital payments and open banking, and its Love2shop brand.

PayPoint has a retail network of more than 30,000 convenience stores through which it offers community services including cash withdrawals and deposits, ATMs, cash bill payments, energy top-ups and vouchers.

It also operates Collect+ and Royal Mail Shops which allow parcels to be picked up and dropped off at thousand of local stores.

The firm is not disclosing targets for cost-cutting and did not specify whether there would be an impact on staff, among the roughly 940-strong workforce it reported this time last year.

But it said the reorganisation will create cost savings and could lead to more money being handed to shareholders.

As part of the changes, PayPoint said it was focusing on driving more consumer visits and increasing sales from its services across the retail partners, and shifting away from the emphasis on growing the chain.

It will also involve a major “reset” of the structure of its merchant services business, which works with more than 30,000 UK SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) to deliver payment services in their shops.

Meanwhile, PayPoint said it wants to grow the Love2shop brand which supplies digital and physical gift cards.

The London-listed company said it was expecting to record a record financial performance for the year to the end of March, when the results are published in June.

It also expects to have returned more than £90 million to shareholders through buybacks and dividends over the financial year.