Manila, Philippines – Global digital payments company Visa has launched its latest resource offerings to assist Filipino merchants, especially small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs).
Taking full advantage of Visa’s digital payment solutions, this online toolkit aims to optimise the customer shopping experience and increase sales, particularly in the Philippine tourism sector.
This is part of Visa’s commitment to empower Filipino SMEs and boost tourism, a crucial growth sector for the economy, by helping more merchants offer seamless contactless payments.
The SME online toolkit offers merchants detailed, step-by-step instructions in English, including a script for cashiers on how to initiate and complete digital payment transactions.
The toolkit describes how most Visa cards have the contactless feature as identified by the symbol and includes instructions on how customers can tap the terminal with their card themselves to make payments.
Additionally, this toolkit offering from Visa comes alongside its other efforts to promote tourism in the Philippines, with its participation in the Philippine Department of Tourism’s tourism summit as a panel, as well as a partnership with the Pacific Association of Tourism (PATA) wherein Visa led a workshop trained tourism SMEs on financial, risk management, digital skills, and highlighting digital payments preferred by tourists.
Talking about this initiative, Jeff Navarro, country manager for Visa Philippines, said, “Visa is committed to empowering businesses with the latest payment technologies and enabling contactless payments to support the growth of tourism in the Philippines. With Visa’s new SME online toolkit, we hope to facilitate the widespread adoption of digital payments among SMEs, addressing the needs of the travel ecosystem and aligning with the preferences of today’s travellers.”
Tag: payments
Singapore – McLaren Racing has announced it has signed a multi-year partnership deal with global payments and financial platform Airwallex to modernise their global financial operations and support their iconic sport’s brand, the Formula 1 team.
In this partnership, Airwallex will support McLaren’s global financial operations through its treasury management, cross-border pay-outs, and settlement product suite.
McLaren’s existing payment infrastructure limits payments to suppliers to a single currency account based in the UK, resulting in high foreign exchange (FX) charges, slow transfers, and additional SWIFT fees.
Its new partnership with Airwallex is expected to optimise its supply chain payments for all Grand Prix. McLaren will have access to Airwallex’s financial technology that can unlock multi-currency payment options, providing the company the ability to hold core currencies and exchange them faster and with ease at any point, reducing the amount of SWIFT fees that may be payable by leveraging Airwallex’s extensive global proprietary payment rail network.
Airwallex will also support the launch and ongoing operation of McLaren’s digital partner merchandise platform, providing the technology needed to further boost their multi-currency collection capabilities and allowing them to offer a broad range of global and local payment options.
Additionally, aside from its product integration, the McLaren Formula 1 team has also signed Airwallex as its partner. The fintech company’s logo will be prominently displayed on the halo of the McLaren MCL38, on driver Lando Norris’ and Oscar Piastri’s overalls, including the pit crew, as well as across other McLaren official-branded material through the 2024 season and beyond.
With its multi-market reach and huge global annual viewership, Airwallex’s partnership with McLaren Formula 1 Team is also expected to help the fintech company in its growth trajectory as it continues to scale globally. The partnership aligns with Airwallex’s global ambitions to be the financial platform of choice for innovative businesses across the world.
Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing, said, “In the competitive world of Formula 1, efficiency and performance are crucial both on and off the track. We are delighted to have Airwallex on board and use their innovative and trusted payment solutions to support our team’s financial operations.”
Meanwhile, Jack Zhang, CEO and co-founder of Airwallex, also shared, “There are very few brands that match McLaren’s heritage and global appeal. Like McLaren, Airwallex is constantly innovating to move faster and with greater precision—with a product that unites people around the world. Our partnership will play a key role in supporting our global expansion, and we look forward to working with the McLaren team in 2024 and beyond to support our mutual growth.”
Bengaluru, India – With the Indian payment ecosystem undergoing a paradigm shift in recent years, digital payments in India is expected to constitute nearly 65% of all payments by 2026 and valued at around US$10t in that same year, according to a report by digital payments company PhonePe and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
According to the report, India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system has supercharged India’s transition to non-cash payments, especially in person-to-person (P2P) fund transfers and low value merchant (P2M) payments. Not surprisingly, UPI saw about 9 times the transaction volume increase in the past 3 years, increasing from 5 billion transactions in FY19 to about 46 billion transactions in FY22; accounting for more than 60% of non-cash transaction volumes in FY22.
It also noted that a key outcome of the many significant shifts in customer behaviour was an acceleration of digital payments in India. Customers switched to e-commerce and contactless modes of digital payment to minimise contact and infection risk. More than a 50% jump was observed in monthly transaction volumes across UPI, Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS), Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) over 6 months following the imposition of lockdown in March 2020.
Karthik Raghupathy, head of strategy and investor relations at PhonePe, said, “This indicates that digital payment has truly gained ubiquitous acceptance across the country. While Tier 1-2 cities have witnessed high acceptance of digital payments, penetration in Tier 3-6 cities shows headroom for growth. The next wave of growth will now come from Tier 3-6 locations, as evidenced in the past two years wherein Tier 3-6 cities have contributed to nearly 60 to 70% of new customers.”
Meanwhile, Prateek Roongta, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, commented, “India is set to become a digital payment economy as a source of payments invert with 65% transactions being done digitally by 2026, as opposed to 40% transactions today. Merchant payments will emerge as the most powerful driver of this growth, especially in the offline segment due to growing QR code deployments. We expect that merchant payments will soon outpace person-to-person fund transfers.”
He added, “We will increasingly observe digital payments get embedded in all forms of commerce, we will also witness the progression from embedded payments to embedded finance. As more and more merchants begin to accept digital payments, it will unlock a significant change in access to credit for small merchants due to the creation of a digital transaction trail.”
Malaysia – Nium, the global platform for modern money movement, has announced the availability of real-time payments into Malaysia, further strengthening the company’s real-time payments capabilities across the globe. With the addition of Malaysia, Nium now processes over 75% of transactions globally in real-time, and increases its total real-time payment markets to a market-leading 100 countries.
Pratik Gandhi, COO and co-founder at Nium, said more countries are turning to Nium to bring their legacy systems into the modern age.
“We enable money to move around the world – instantly, easily, and securely – while helping businesses position themselves for more opportunities in the digital future,” Gandhi said.
With real-time payments in Malaysia and other emerging markets around the world expected to surge in the coming years, Nium is uniquely positioned to help global businesses drive faster payments, better manage liquidity, satisfy their customers, and ultimately grow their business faster across the globe.
Nium has also announced it has secured an expanded license in Malaysia. Nium is now able to onboard licensed corporations of all sizes to its platform – including Financial Institutions and PSPs – with higher outbound limits, up to MYR6,000,000 per day, and the ability to control end user pricing.
The “International Remittance Hub” (IRH) license is issued by the central bank of Malaysia, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), and it provides Nium with in-market capabilities including Pay Out in more than 190 countries, with over 100 in real-time, as well as technology and compliance cost savings for businesses, and settlement in local currency (MYR).
Manila, Philippines – Alternative payment tools have emerged as mainstream for e-commerce payments in the Philippines and accounted for 30.7% in total e-commerce value in 2021. This was according to the latest data from data and analytics company GlobalData.
According to the data, the share of alternative payments in the total e-commerce payment value in the Philippines stood at 30.7% in 2021, up from 21.0% in 2017. Alternative payments were followed by cash and payment cards, which accounted for 29.8% and 23.5%, respectively.
In addition, the Philippines’ e-commerce payment market is crowded with several domestic and international alternative payment solution providers with GCash, Maya , PayPal, and GrabPay leading the space. According to a previous 2021 financial services consumer survey, GCash alone accounted for 18.2% share of the total e-commerce payment value in 2021.
Nikhil Reddy, payments senior analyst at GlobalData, said, “Although ‘cash on delivery’ continues to remain one of the preferred payment methods for Filipinos, alternative payment solutions have surpassed cash to become the most preferred payment tools for e-commerce purchases over the last few years. This is supported by the rising internet and smartphone penetration, growing consumer preference and rising merchant acceptance.”
He added, “The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the adoption of e-commerce payments in the country, as wary consumers increasingly favoured online shopping to avoid getting exposed to disease vectors. This has also benefited alternative payment tools, with consumers citing convenience, speed, and reward benefits as key factors.”
The rise of alternative payment methods allows the e-commerce market in the Philippines to grew at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.8% between 2017 and 2022, is expected to further grow at a CAGR of 15.8% over 2022-25 to reach PHP495.2b (US$9.7b) in 2025.
“While alternative payment tools lead the Philippines e-commerce payment space, they are also now increasingly being used for in-store payments. With the growing adoption of QR code-based solutions among merchants and government initiatives to push electronic payments, alternative payments are poised to disrupt the country’s overall consumer payments space,” Reddy concluded.
Tokyo, Japan – E-commerce company Rakuten and food ordering company Uber Eats have recently teamed up to roll out a new payment service integration where Rakuten Pay’s online payment service will be integrated into Uber Eat’s online system.
Rakuten Pay will be available as an official payment method when ordering food and groceries on Uber Eats for all users by late April.
In addition, this new integration will allow Rakuten customers to effortlessly sign up for an Uber Eats account using their Rakuten ID. They will also be able to earn and spend Rakuten Points — Rakuten’s flagship loyalty program — when ordering food and groceries on the Uber Eats app.
Ryo Matsumura, senior executive officer at Rakuten Group and vice president at Rakuten’s Commerce Company, said, “We are extremely pleased to launch this Uber Eats and Rakuten Pay collaboration with our partners. Consumer demand for quick commerce is growing rapidly. We are confident that this collaboration will contribute greater convenience to the service and improve the user experience, and we are very much looking forward to delivering new value to customers.”
Meanwhile, Yukiko Muto, president at Uber Eats Japan, commented, “It is an honour to be partnering with Rakuten, one of Japan’s largest and most trusted internet companies. We extend a warm welcome to the more than 100 million Rakuten members in Japan, and can’t wait to bring them the benefits of food and grocery delivery within 30 minutes. This is a huge step in Uber Eats’ journey in Japan, and I look forward to more exciting ventures with Rakuten in the future.”
To celebrate this collaboration, Uber Eats and Rakuten will launch a special promotion starting 27 April for both first-time Uber Eats users and all current Uber Eats users as well.
Manila, Philippines – Velo Labs, a blockchain infrastructure company have announce its partnership with iRemit, the Filipino-owned, non-bank remittance service provider, to provide individuals and businesses access to improved cross-border payments using blockchain technology and Velo Digital Credits.
Velo Labs and iRemit will both provide the technology and settlement network with the aim to ensure that these cross-border payments may be sent and received at a cheaper cost, faster, and with higher security than is now feasible through traditional financial institutions.
Notably, by connecting with the Velo network, iRemit can now work directly with its trusted partners to settle transactions relatively instantaneously, eliminating the need for middlemen. The efficiency brought about by combining Velo Labs’ blockchain payment infrastructure with iRemit’s robust domestic settlement network would allow iRemit’s users – including overseas Filipinos, migrant workers, and local businesses and people – to keep more of their hard-earned money.
Mike Kennedy, CEO of Velo Labs, said that their partnership with iRemit is a direct reflection of Velo Labs’ core mission: to build a global, decentralized, and interoperable settlement network that provides fast, reliable, secure cross-border payments.
Kennedy emphasised, “As they grow their global settlement network, they are excited to partner with institutions like iRemit, who share their vision of empowering those who rely so heavily on cross-border payments.”
Manila, Philippines – Global package delivery company UPS has announced that local electronic wallet GCash has been now integrated into their services, where any shipper or recipient in the Philippines can now instantly and securely pay for UPS’s logistics services, and settle any outstanding shipment-related charges, at any time, using GCash’s digital payment app on their mobile phones.
Grace Gavilan, finance manager at UPS in the Philippines, said, “Being able to leverage GCash’s leading mobile payments technology enhances how our customers do business with us in several ways, including improved customer experience, payment convenience, and even minimising package delays in the event shipments are held at customs due to outstanding duties and taxes.”
She added, “Small businesses form the backbone of our economy, and as the Philippines pivots towards becoming a digitalized and cash-lite economy, their active participation is crucial or they risk getting left behind. We’re confident this enhancement opens more doors for Filipino small businesses to be part of an inclusive financial ecosystem, and addresses their needs for a smarter, more digital-first approach to logistics and international trade.”
Meanwhile, Luigi Reyes, vice president for enterprise at GCash, commented, “Our company’s fintech service is built on the premise of enabling a digital ecosystem to help every Filipino. We are delighted to team up with UPS as this moves us closer to our goal of accelerating financial inclusion in our society – across government, businesses and consumers – via our financial services platform.”
The latest integration is part of UPS’ latest initiatives aimed at enabling a global smart, technology-enabled logistics network, including new shipping technologies like My Choice for Business which provides shippers with greater flexibility and visibility of their inbound and outbound shipments.
Manila, Philippines – Global payments platform 2C2P has partnered with ShopeePay, the integrated mobile wallet from e-commerce platform Shopee, to increase access to digital payments for consumers and merchants in Southeast Asia. Through the partnership, ShopeePay will be enabled as a payment option to 2C2P’s extensive merchant network across five markets in Southeast Asia, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
With ShopeePay as a payment option for 2C2P’s regional merchant network, businesses and retailers can accept cash-free payments seamlessly, manage and track their finances with ease, and attract more offline traffic to expand their customer base. Consequently, ShopeePay users can securely pay and earn Shopee coins to gain rewards at an increased number of participating merchants.
Agnes Chua, executive director for business and product development at 2C2P, said that the partnership fast-tracks advanced digital solutions for merchants and banks to enhance sales, transaction volume, competitive edge, and streamline services.
“2C2P is excited to partner with ShopeePay to provide access to a broader range of convenient payment options with seamless integration to our merchant network. We are already working together in Singapore and Thailand and this extended partnership showcases the synergies of our collaboration. Now, with ShopeePay, merchants can operate at lower costs, expand their reach to more customers, and boost sales conversions,” Chua said.
Meanwhile, Ruoshan Tao, head of ShopeePay Online in the Philippines, commented, “ShopeePay is looking forward to working closely with 2C2P to enable their merchant network to capture more sales in a secure and seamless manner and give consumers a more convenient and rewarding cashless payment experience. ShopeePay is committed to improving access to digital payments and to better the lives of individuals and businesses through technology.”
2C2P recently announced a partnership with hoolah, a buy now, pay later provider to enable seamless BNPL integration for Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong merchants.
Manila, Philippines – Tinkoff, the global online financial ecosystem centred around the needs of customers, has extended its partnership with integrated digital ecosystem provider BPC, to leverage the firm’s SaaS Cloud payment services for its planned expansion to the Philippines.
The project is an extension of an existing partnership between the two companies. This is a testimony to BPC’s proven technical expertise in digital banking and payments, as well as its extensive local knowledge and experience in the Philippines and across Asia.
The new agreement entails that BPC’s next-generation payment processing company, Radar Payments, will be managing the end-to-end payment experience for prospective Tinkoff customers in the country. This includes virtual and physical card production, as well as debit, credit card issuance and management, SmartVista ACS for 3DS secure services, and fraud prevention.
Moreover, BPC will be supporting Tinkoff in cloud SaaS payment adoption in the Philippines, a trend that has emerged globally for many reasons, including greater flexibility in accessing banking services, and cost savings and security.
Tinkoff said that it also chose BPC for its capability to support its ambitious growth both in terms of customers and expected transaction volume.
George Chesakov, Tinkoff’s international expansion lead, believes that their technology and experience will help them build the right products, boosting financial inclusion in the Philippines.
“With BPC’s payment processing business, we have a partner with whom we have a long-standing relationship and who aligns with our SaaS Cloud vision. Moreover, we value BPC’s strong local knowledge of the Philippines’ banking sector, which should help us start operating in this market faster,” said Chesakov.
Meanwhile, Evgenia Loginova, the CEO at Radar Payments by BPC, shared that they could not be any prouder to continue their journey serving Tinkoff and its future customers in Asia.
“Success depends on the speed of deployment of new services in the digital banking industry, especially in the Philippines market, which will welcome a number of new market players in 2022,” said Loginova.