LAS VEGAS, March 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Smartag International, Inc. (OTC Markets: SMRN) is pleased to announce that on February 27, 2018, Smartag International, Inc. ("Smartag," "we" or the "Company) entered into a joint venture agreement with PT. Supratama Makmur Sejahtera ("PTSMS"), an Indonesian Fintech company to form a Joint Venture Indonesian PMA company in which Smartag will own 51% equity and PTSMS will own 49%. This follows an earlier MOU signed on October 12, 2017 between PTSMS and PT Rijan Dinamis Selaras ("RDS") representing Pondok Pesantren Riyadhul Jannah Pacer Mojokerjo, founder of Consultative Assembly of Indonesian Boarding Schools which has a network of 28,000 boarding schools to undertake a Fintech project (the "Indonesian Project").
The new Indonesian PMA company plans to undertake the Indonesian Project to provide a rural e-Wallet Fintech services to approximately 10,000 boarding school students which are owned by many local Islamic Baitu Maal or BMT co-operatives within 3-5 years. Currently, many of these BMT co-operatives already have their own basic desktop versions of legalized rural micro finance and pawn brokering businesses. Smartag intends to combine these different business platforms into one mobile Fintech platform which will provide students e-Wallet services as well as the current BMT micro financing and pawn broking services. This platform will also be available to students' immediate family members. The rural villages will benefit from various subset features ranging from rural e-Commerce supplies of basic food stuff via linked up basic mom & pop stores to micro-financing and pawn brokering.
Smartag plans to leverage its previous inexperience with food traceability and e-Commerce as key pillars of the new strategy to venture into Fintech, starting with the Indonesian Project. In particular, its past expertise and inroads within the GS1 supply chain community using EPCIS will serve as the cornerstone to venture into new sharia traceability using cryptography and key knowledge protocol. Smartag's solutions will enable peers to negotiate services, process and retrieve data, verification on integrity and availability and at the same time transfer of funds versus goods. At the same time, Smartag's previous 3 years venture with Shenzhen Shen Nan Shun ("SSNST") in e-Commerce fits well with the Indonesian Project. With the recent agreement signed with SSNST/HK Vander to form a Joint Venture company in Hong Kong, Smartag intends to further strengthen its expertise to reach the potentially huge rural South-east Asian communities. With the principle factors of connectivity via smartphone telecommunications having been mostly resolved, Smartag believes that it has at least a three year lead ahead of the big international e-Commerce competitors, many of them who will stay in the urban areas due to unfamiliarity with e-logistics.
With this Indonesian Project and the corresponding agreement with the BMT co-operative network, which is one of the largest group of identifiable rural communities within South-east Asia (with a total country population of approximately in Indonesia alone of 300 million), Smartag aims to capture approximately 10% or 30 million e-wallet users within 3 to five years.