You might be doing that big sigh when I mention “payment platform” but looking at recent developments, this are is getting hotter by the day with new player trying to study the market while silently preparing their product to help people pay online. Asian version of Paypal Here, or Square.
Singapore-based company Swiff is trying to do exactly what Square does in US market, it basically enables regular people to receive credit payment using their mobile phones. Although they’re not exactly inventing a new wheel, they are trying to change the way people transact at least in the region.
In the US, Square is very well-received by its merchants and even manage to raise $169 million in funding from VC firms and strategic investors such as Visa. And of course Square can easily dwarf Swiff once they have decided to expand to Asia, and with Visa on their back it’s only a matter of time until it happens.
As a competing company, Swiff has a big advantage when they decided to support Android rather than making it exclusive for iOS devices. A lot of analysts have a big bet that Android will grow even further in Asia, the price is a significant factor in emerging markets such as India, China, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. Thus giving Swiff’s Android app gain more popularity among merchants in these markets.
Other payment company is also probing the possibility of expanding to Indonesian market, we heard from numerous sources. VCPay is a New Zealand-based company that generates one-time virtual credit card that’ll help users do transactions online easier and more secure.
For VCPay to expand to Indonesia simply makes perfect sense, because the low credit card adoption rate but a big appetite for online shopping. Not to mention other markets such as Vietnam and Thailand, if not more mature market such as Singapore and Japan.
Will either payment company gain traction in Asia, or either one will die instantly still remains to be seen. But looking at the big gap for online payment in Asia, there’s definitely a room for experimentation in this field and some markets are an ideal place for a platform testbed before hits mass market.
Before they do anything then need to change the name! After meeting the co-founder at a bar was googling Swift for the first 5 minutes…
Yeah, being at a bar doesn’t make it better too. j/k