The traditional wallet- the little leather pouch that holds your cash, credit cards, driver’s license, loyalty cards and family pictures has been a necessity for decades. However, it is often unwieldy to carry, insecure and expensive. Enter Digital Wallet- it resides in your mobile phone, is convenient, secure and cheaper. You can receive money from your work, pay bills, transfer money to your dependents or a friend, and make online purchases with just a few taps. In some cases, you can tap the phone and make an in-store purchase too.
With friendly user-interfaces, inbuilt risk controls and electronic invoicing, a payment approval can be given in a matter of minutes. The funds move quite fast, unhindered by traditional frameworks with multiple hops and accompanying fees. All you need to do is to download an app, register and get going.
A prominent player in the field, MatchMove Pay, is a financial technology company that provides innovative, end-to-end enterprise payment solutions to help startups and large enterprises increase revenue and boost user engagement through its patented technologies. The proprietary cloud-based MatchMove Wallet OS™ enables any company to easily offer customers a fully branded, secure mobile wallet solution that includes P2P transfer, Remittance, Top Up channels, Virtual/Physical Payment Cards, Loyalty Points & Rewards, Promotions & Offers and many more features.
Dawn of an Era
Southeast Asia has a large population of more than 600 million people, where the widespread digitization and fast-growing economies promise exciting times ahead. Yet many people do not have a bank account or a credit card to keep pace with changing times and trends.
This is where Shailesh Naik (Founder & CEO) and Leow Hsueh Huah, (COO & Co-founder) saw an opportunity. While running a B2B entertainment platform business, they found that no one was addressing mobile payments, and thus founded MatchMove Pay in 2014.
Since then, the company has expanded from its home base at Singapore to other countries in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines.
Last year, MatchMove was awarded the license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to conduct remittance services. The remittance market is estimated at more than US$50 billion in Southeast Asia, with outbound remittance from Singapore forecast to be more than US$1 billion. MatchMove’s technology allows remittances to be transacted via mobile phones quickly, safely and affordably.
India is another big market for Matchmove, with a 1.25 billion population, increasing mobile penetration and an aspiring middle class.
Southeast Asia is poised to become one of the world’s fastest-growing regions for online and e-commerce according to a Google & Temasek joint report. The online economy is expected to be $200 billion in 2025, with eCommerce being $88 billion of it. Yet, credit card ownership is at less than 7% in all Southeast Asian markets except for Singapore and Malaysia. In some countries, more than 50% of the population do not have bank accounts. MatchMove is trying to bridge the immense potential that e-commerce holds in the region and the large unbanked and uncarded segment of the population.
About MatchMove Founders
Before MatchMove, Shailesh set up the Asian operations of CryptoLogic Ltd., a gaming company. He was also the Asia Pacific managing director of strategy and operations at Cisco Systems Inc.
HH Leow started his career in the armed forces after he received the Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Merit Scholarship for undergraduate studies in the UK. He later obtained an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He completed stints in global venture capital firms Vertex Ventures and FairPrice, before joining Cryptologic as Vice President of Operations for Asia Pacific.
MatchMove’s Wall of Fame
MatchMove has been recognized internationally for its outstanding innovation. In 2013, MatchMove was ranked as Singapore’s fastest growing technology company in Southeast Asia in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific.
In 2014, MatchMove won the award of “Top Global Innovator” in the Global FinTech competition, the SWIFT Innotribe Innovator Challenge in Boston. FST /ASEAN Future of Banking, Singapore, acknowledged MatchMove with ‘Top FinTech Disruptor’ in 2015.
MatchMove has also been recognized for its human resource practices. The company was presented with the prestigious 2016 TAFEP Exemplary Employer Award by the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices. Devised in 2010 to help push Singapore to become a global standard in diversity and employee satisfaction, the award is given to companies who have demonstrated exceptional performance in championing diversity, progressiveness, inclusion, and fairness in the workplace.
Global Expansion Beyond the Horizon
MatchMove’s goal is to go global. The company has recently set up an office in Miami and plans to open more in Africa, Dubai, and Scandinavia. The company already has five million users and expects to grow to 30 to 40 million users by the end of 2017.
MatchMove has many strong tie-ups in Asia. Its latest is with Paul Fincap, the flagship company of the Paul Merchants Group. MatchMove has also signed with YES Bank, which gives the company access to the bank’s large enterprise customer base.
MatchMove has also made a strong start in Vietnam winning partnerships with Vietnam’s leading commercial banks, HDBank and TPBank as well as VTC, Vietnam’s largest Multimedia Corporation.
In addition, MatchMove launched myWallet, a virtual wallet, in a strategic partnership with Mastercard, enabling consumers who do not own credit cards or online banking facilities to make payments on the popular network.
Further afield, MatchMove has a strategic partnership with iRESlab, the trusted research and development partner across verticals, to expand its operations in the U.S. In the Caribbean, CaribShopper, the region’s premier m-commerce and e-commerce solution provider, is integrating with MatchMove’s award-winning Wallet OS and offering virtual and physical prepaid cards to CaribShopper’s users.