Tekkis to facilitate digital payments for MSMEs

With t-Pay, Joshua says the company has built a payment gateway that is connected to various payment channels, ensuring ease and an excellent customer experience.

South-East Asia is experiencing a wave of digitisation. The region added 400 million new Internet users in the first year of the global Covid-19 pandemic and 70% of Asean population is now online.

The pandemic also triggered a broad expansion of eCommerce and demand for transfers and contactless payments that has not faded even as the pandemic wanes.

Despite the surge in Internet usage, about 70% of South-East Asia’s adults remain either unbanked or underbanked.

In addition, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which account for 97% of the region’s enterprises and two-thirds of its workforce, have often been locked out of mainstream finance and face a funding gap of US$300bil (RM1.4 trillion), according to a report by the SME Finance Forum in 2017.

According to a recent Google-led study, South-East Asia’s burgeoning digital payment market is anticipated to reach US$2 trillion (RM9.1 trillion) in transaction value in 2030, growing three times over a decade earlier, as more financial technology (fintech) and digital banks emerge from the region’s best-funded segment.

To ensure MSMEs are not left out of the digital payment landscape, tech company Tekkis Sdn Bhd is upping its game plan to rope in as many MSMEs as its clients to facilitate their digital payments.

Its chief executive officer and founder Joshua Smith tells StarBizWeek that Tekkis aims to ensure the Internet user’s journey towards payments and identity verification is swift and secure.

“Tekkis’ products, t-Pay and t-Verify, were built and inspired by the notion of helping any businesses be it startups, MSMEs or enterprises.”

He says the products offer seamless approach to payments and customer verification, which is a key bottleneck in the digital era.

“Every business will require customer verification and accept payment at some point in the customer journey.

“Given the volatile market and a lagging post-pandemic recovery for the bottom 40 segment, Tekkis is trying to help by having these products ready for adoption by small businesses by having no setup, monthly or annual fees, and will ensure that there is a no-code setup for our products and services,” he says.

With t-Pay, he says the company has built a payment gateway that is connected to various payment channels, ensuring ease and an excellent customer experience.

The company has laid out the groundwork, so businesses have to just connect to Tekkis and enable payments via a variety of channels, he adds.

These payment channels include Financial Process Exchange (FPX), e-Wallets, cards and buy now pay later (BNPL) providers.

FPX is a Malaysia-based payment method that allows customers to complete transactions online using their bank credentials.

t-Verify, on the other hand, is the company’s in-house and proprietary software that enables it to document and perform facial verification.

“Here, businesses always know who they are dealing with and customers can rest assured that their data is secure without anyone else impersonating them,” he says.

On the current market acceptance of digital payment platforms in the region, Smith says digital payment methods like e-wallets have become essential for everyone.

“But it wasn’t just e-wallets that were reshaping the payment landscape. The growth in fintech has led to a couple of payment trends that seem to be gaining traction and reshaping the entire landscape.

“From Tekkis’ data, we see that e-wallet growth as a payment acceptance channel is outpacing FPX and cards. Clearly, closing that gap is critical to Malaysia and the region’s future prosperity.”

He says the Asian Development Bank has identified the strengthening of SMEs as the most important factor in South-East Asia’s economic recovery from the pandemic.

“The Asean Digital Generation Report 2021 shows that three-quarters of the region’s SMEs want access to more digital payments, while half want to see greater digitisation in lending.

“This is the reason Tekkis is working hard to drive the market acceptance of digital payment platforms, moving forward,” he says.

As digital payment platforms gain widespread adoption in the country, Smith says there lies some challenges and barriers for the expansion of these platforms.

He says the challenge is to embed trust in customers adopting these platforms.

This includes the confidence in a new product and viability from a standpoint of cost effectiveness, not only in the short term but in the long term as well.

“For us, education on the importance of t-Pay and t-Verify is imperative to always knowing the customer you are interacting with and collecting payments from.

“Also, to ensure that t-Pay and t-Verify make business sense when onboarding a new merchant or business partner. That’s where Tekkis comes in,” he adds.