Fave, as one of Southeast Asia's leading payment merchant platforms, has announced a collaboration and investment from Pine Labs to expand cashless payment solutions to offline SMEs and enterprises to accelerate digitization and growth post-COVID-19 recovery.
Pine Labs is Asia's leading digital payments and merchant commerce platform. Its unique cloud-based nature enables it to offer a wide range of payment acceptance and digital solutions for merchants.
How we’re Expanding Cashless Payment Solutions
Through the collaboration, Fave’s QR code will be supported and integrated into Pine Lab’s terminals, enabling a comprehensive, secure, and effortless payment acceptance and loyalty solution for merchants.
Fave’s cashless payment solution will expand into both debit and credit card platforms via Pine Labs payment terminals. Merchants working with Pine Labs will also gain access to Fave’s customer loyalty benefits and will be able to reward their customers with cashback.
Merchants will enjoy a consolidated payment method and gain access to transparent real-time reporting, customer insights, and demographic data via access to Fave’s digital dashboard, Favebiz. As part of the partnership, Pine Labs will be investing in Fave to accelerate payment adoption across Southeast Asia
An estimated 50,000 merchants working with Fave and Pine Labs across Southeast Asia will also gain access to the former’s loyalty solutions and be able to reward customers with cashback.
Why the Partnership is Crucial to Businesses
Joel Neoh, Co-Founder of Fave
Fave’s Co-Founder and CEO, Joel Neoh, said, “The investment and partnership bring together great understanding and expertise in technology development to help support merchants through successful business transformations, he further added that,
“With digitalization playing an increasingly critical role in the recovery of Southeast Asia’s economy, merchants recognize that they need to accelerate the development of digital solutions to ensure they remain competitive. We will work with Pine Labs to further strengthen Fave’s mission of helping merchants adapt to and digitalize in the new normal.”
This collaboration is an extension of Fave’s ongoing focus on working with major banks, fintech firms, and e-wallets in Singapore and Malaysia such as SGQR, Paynet, and DuitNow QR to provide customer loyalty solutions to a bigger ecosystem.
The collaboration is also crucial in restrengthening each company’s market positioning and value proposition in Southeast Asia. Fave has a long working history with merchants in the SME space, while Pine Labs’ merchants range from enterprise and larger merchant organizations.
How Streamlined Operations can Help with Recovery
B Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, Image Source: Pine Labs
Especially in difficult times like this, when merchants are worried about staying afloat, digital providers must reassure merchants of all sizes that we are working to support them and help them navigate their recovery from COVID-19 disruptions using digital advancements that streamline operations and boost revenue. B Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs said,
“We’re looking to unify the entire payment system in Southeast Asia. Fave’s expertise in operating merchant loyalty programs and their foothold in the QR space enables Pine Labs to expand the existing ecosystem of merchants connected to digital payment solutions.”
Digital Payment Trends that are Leading The Market
Southeast Asia’s merchants have witnessed a drastic drop from the start of the pandemic with Malaysia’s retail sector shrinking by 11% in the first quarter 2020, and Singapore entering a technical recession this quarter with its GDP shrinking by 12.6%.
The road to recovery has started with promising signs that it is underway with specific sectors such as automotive sales and F&B reporting business recovery and pent-up demand from customers upon entering the post-pandemic phase.
According to research from Mastercard’s Impact Studies, there has been a significant decline in cash transactions since the start of the outbreak. The Asia Pacific region is leading the move towards digital payments with the majority of consumers believing it is the cleaner, safer way to pay. 91% of those surveyed reported that they are now using tap-and-go payments.
As cashless payment adoption amongst consumers is expanding, Fave is at the forefront of this shift, enabling thousands of restaurants and retailers to easily accept multiple forms of cashless payments, making every transaction convenient and safe for both consumers and merchants.
The partnership between Fave and Pine Labs seeks to support the recovery of businesses through the strength of their fintech capabilities in providing holistic QR and card payment solutions to merchants with both companies having strong synergy in building digital platforms for merchants to grow digitally.
