Malaysian FinTech firm Soft Space has raked in $5 million from Japanese e-commerce company Transcosmos Inc. The firm, in a statement, said, “it will form a capital and business affiliation that will transform the digital payment industry for traditional businesses in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.”
As a part of the funding round, the two entities have partnered to introduce an omnichannel customer relationship management (CRM) solution. It will enhance clients’ digital engagements by delivering appealing ads, loyalty marketing programme that can directly send tailored discount coupons to customers’ smartphones which utilises both offline and online data. In addition, merchants use the chatbot services within the solution to further engage their users. Currently active in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan, the startup is also eyeing the expansion into Japan as well as in Southeast Asia.
Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Soft Space serves 20 financial institutions across 10 nations. Its solution focuses on mobile payments which includes Mobile Point-of-Sales (MPOS) solution. It claims to have shipped approximately 180,000 MPOS terminals to banks. Chris Leong, Chief Strategy Officer, Soft Space, said,
As payments is integral part of any commerce, this partnership will position both companies to be the leading players in the region to help businesses transform digitally in all aspect of the business and to monetise on the trend of e-commerce for brick-and-mortar businesses in the region.
Also, it is said to be the first firm in Asia to have obtained a centralized EMV Level 2 certification for cloud-based server. Not only this, its solutions are certified by EMV, PCI and major card schemes. Masataka Okuda, President and COO, Transcosmos, commented,
We are elated about this new partnership. Adding Soft Space’s mobile payment solutions to our existing DEC (digital marketing, e-commerce, contact centre) solutions will further increase the value of our digital transformation services for our clients, especially in the ASEAN market where we cannot ignore consumers’ shopping behaviour in brick-and-mortar stores.
