Paywizard has secured £3.5m of funding to support the roll out of its pay TV subscriber management platform to emerging markets in Africa and South America.

The Kirkcaldy-headquartered company has also appointed former BT Entertainment chief executive Andrew Burke as chairman.

Burke, who has held the role of chairman designate for the past nine months, has replaced Peter Freeman, who remains on Paywizard’s board.

Burke will work alongside Paywizard’s co-founders Jonathan Guthrie and Ronnie Millar.

He said the funds from the Scottish Loan Fund would be spent on sales and marketing as Paywizard looks to build on its recent launch into Asia.

“Without it [the focus on Africa and South America] would have been self-funded. Now we can grow faster and stronger and market to regions that we might not have been able to enter.

“The UK is a mature market. It’s not dead - we recently started working with two companies looking to provide an OTT service in the UK - but there won’t be the same level of growth as in Asia and the emerging markets.

“There is not a lot of product development to do; the core solution that allows users to manage subscribers, chase debt and for marketing handle subscriber management, spot churn, upsell and cross sell is already there.”

Paywizard’s clients include BT Sport, NBC Universal, Setanta Sports and NHK Cosmomedia Europe.

Paywizard chief executive Jonathan Guthrie added: “Our new investment, along with Andrew’s involvement, is a clear sign of confidence in Paywizard and in the role that advanced subscriber management has to play in the television market.

“With international deals in the pipeline, we are really showing operators how to build profitable pay-TV businesses.”

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