Pago is the app that helps you easily manage, from your phone or tablet, utility bill payments to over 40 providers, electronic top-ups for prepaid cards and road toll vignettes. In other words, it’s a real household essential :). It launched in 2016, the initiative of two friends, Adrian Cighi and Alexandru Popescu, founders of Timesafe, a Romanian start-up that even caught the attention of the BT Group, which recently invested and became a shareholder. Although it has been available to the wider public for only about 4 months, the app is already used by over 10,000 people. Let’s hear the story behind Pago!

Adrian has 10 years’ experience in finance, as an investment analyst in London, Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest. Alexandru, immediately after finishing his studies in the United Kingdom, founded his own design and app development agency, a company that also supported the development of Pago.

From idea to today’s team

• “We’d had the idea for an app like this for a long time, and it came back every time I had to pay my monthly bills. The turning point when we decided to actually build it was a conversation with Cosmin Vladimirescu, CEO of Mastercard Romania, and Gabriel Ghita, Business Development Manager at Mastercard Romania, about the very high share of utility bills paid in cash in Romania — which in 2015 was over 85%. We realised there was an opportunity here, because that statistic wasn’t going to stay that way for long,” Adrian Cighi told us, and continued: “So we set to work to create the simplest possible card bill‑payment experience. From the start, the main objective was to bring as many utility providers as possible into a single app and eliminate repetitive steps in monthly payments, such as searching for invoices in email or using 4–5 different online accounts that each ask for card details for every single bill.”

• Development of the Pago app began in February 2016, and a year later, in November 2016, it was announced publicly for the first time at the Internet & Mobile World event in Bucharest. “The app has had Mastercard’s backing from the idea stage, with advice and insights into the payments ecosystem in Romania. Without their help, Pago probably wouldn’t even exist,” Alexandru tells us. The idea was also supported by the software firm founded by Alexandru Popescu, with part of his team becoming part of the Pago team and contributing design, user experience concepts and some of the development effort.

• The prototype was developed in approximately 4 months, during which there were over 100 iterations with design and screen changes in each version.

• Then, for 6 months, the app was presented to utility providers, after which, starting in November last year, the concept was refined into the form available today, in collaboration with BT’s Digital Transformation and Transaction Banking departments.

• Today, the Pago team, besides Adrian and Alexandru, includes 6 developers, 2 designers and a social media and online marketing specialist.

Pago = Pay & Go

The app’s name is a simplification of the first option, Pay&Go. And the coincidence that in Spanish it means “payment” weighed heavily in the decision to keep it. The logo is friendly, and it’s easy to see that Pago helps you look after the household.

What Pago brings to bill payments

• People using the app only need to enter their personal details, payment details and utility provider information once. There’s no need to register again later.

• Pago consolidates monthly bill balances and sends notifications when each bill arrives, as well as a few days before the due date.

• You can pay all your bills with a single payment confirmation.

• Bills can also be paid automatically by scheduling them for a selected day. Payment is made with the card registered in the app, with no need for any other details or confirmations.

The biggest challenge for the Pago team and BT’s role

“The biggest challenge was trying to bring as many providers as possible into the app. We had dozens of meetings and many, many discussions by email and phone to reach a critical mass of providers that could make the app truly useful. After 6 months we were progressing much more slowly than we had expected and realised we had to look for an alternative — a partnership with someone who already had contractual relationships with all providers. That’s how we got to Banca Transilvania, where the idea was very well received by Omer Tetik, the bank’s CEO,” Adrian told us. So BT, alongside Mastercard, became part of the app’s development along the way.

Thank-you messages from Pago users — the best part of every day

“The nicest moments we have every day are the messages from people using Pago, who thank us for the app. It’s encouraging to see that our work over the past 18 months is already helping more and more users save time every month,” Alexandru added.

A few figures about Pago

• Over 10,000 users
• Over 40 utility providers. The providers with the most connected accounts are Orange, RDS&RCS, Enel, Electrica and Engie
• 31 bills paid with a single confirmation is the record in Pago so far

Next steps: as many providers as possible in Pago and new features

Adrian shared a few details about the future plans for Pago: “We want to bring in as many providers and as many payment types as possible. We also want to implement some new, useful features, some of which have come directly from our users via the in‑app chat.”

Pago in 3 words? Pay simply and quickly.