Wider career path for agents at Global Payments

MANILA, Philippines - Unlike the usual customer care service or call centers operating in the country today, the Global Payments Processing Center Inc., a newly opened 73,000-square-foot facility at the Robinsons Cybergate Plaza in Mandaluyong City will provide a wider career path to call center agents, when fully operational by summer of 2011.

The facility, located at the 10th and 11th floors of the Robinsons Cybergate Plaza in Mandaluyong City, will provide 700 seats operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, serving customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, North America, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Asia-Pacific.

“We are not just a call center since we offer a variety of work for our clients, including back office and accounting services, credit certification, marketing and promotions, customer service and a comprehensive line of processing solution for credit and debit cards, business-to-business purchasing cards, gift cards, electronic check conversion and check guarantee, verification and recovery, including electronic check services and terminal management,” said Morgan Schuessler, executive vice president and chief administrative officer of Global Payments Inc.

Schuessler, accompanied by Ian Courtnage, GPI president for the Asia-Pacific; Vincent Perrelli Jr., chief credit and operations officer of GPI; and Claire Ann Yap, senior vice president and head of the Global Service Center (Philippines), welcomed their guest of honor, President Aquino, during the launch of the facility last Nov. 18.

A member of the Fortune 1000 companies, GPI is one of the largest payment processing companies in the world, processing billions of transactions annually through the electronic information network.

It delivers seamless electronic transaction processing services for all payment card types and brands’ Web-based and mobile-based payment processing services and comprehensive merchant point-of-sale (POS) or back-office support and check processing services.

It also provides treasury management/EDI solutions for merchants, acquiring financial institutions, issuing financial institutions and treasury managers.

Customers choose GPI because of its traits such as expertise, security, stability, responsiveness, and global reach with every transaction.

The company opted to locate its Asia facility in the Philippines because of the country’s highly skilled and English-proficient workforce, which led the country to outpace India in the business process outsourcing (BPO) field.

“Not only do you have the highly skilled and English-proficient labor force, but the dedication, passion and hardwork of Filipino agents are just remarkable,” Schuessler said.

GPI has grown its global business to $1.6 billion in 10 years from just $350 million when it started. It now employs 4,000 agents worldwide.

In the Philippines, it envisions to employ 700 agents at the initial stage, growing this as it expands to other areas of the country. But for now, it is focused on its first facility, Yap said.

GPPCI initially opened its doors on the 10th floor last August with 300 agents, three of whom are deaf graduates from the College of Saint Benilde in La Salle.

“We are tying up with more institutions that have special needs and we hope to hire more of these special people,” Yap said.

At the opening of the facility, President Aquino stressed that the Philippines is a natural place for businesses to set up shop.

He exhorted company executives, many of them based in several parts of the world, “to tell your clients and partners that the Philippines is a reliable place for business.”

He made a strong pitch on the cost-effective edge of the Philippines in terms of highly skilled, English-proficient human resources, which made the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, of which Global is a part, a truly “sunshine industry.”

The BPO industry has been going “from strength to strength” from its beginnings in 2001 with a few thousand workers. The industry earned for the country $7.3 billion, creating 550,000 jobs, and would hit $9.4 billion by the end of 2010, the President said.

The President said the BPO sector has become a more preferred investment priority area of the Board of Investments in recent years.

He thanked the company’s top officials for considering locating its facility in the Philippines which would not just give jobs to more Filipinos but would also earn more business for the firm and its clients.