Boost is in the process of working with government agencies such as Malaysia Digital Economy Corp in partnership to digitise merchants, offer them storefronts, and ways of digitally onboarding them, said Abeykoon.
KUALA LUMPUR: Boost, the regional full spectrum fintech arm of Axiata with its merchant business-to-business (B2B) wallet, has the capacity to assist micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to digitalise their business operations.
Boost group chief executive officer Sheyantha Abeykoon said the company has a long history of supporting MSMEs in Malaysia and is proud to be the first to bring a merchant wallet to the market.
“As a digital company, Boost is in a better position to help these businesses.
“We have a long history of supporting MSMEs. Our initial focus was small merchants, whereby the primary means of payment acceptance was cash.
“The first thing we did was to help them go cashless and digital, with the Boost DuitNow QR codes back in 2017,” he told Bernama.
Abeykoon added that Boost then ventured into offering lending solutions, providing financing to these small businesses, and has disbursed almost RM2bil worth of loans to date.
He also said that Boost is in the process of working with government agencies such as Malaysia Digital Economy Corp in partnership to digitise merchants, offer them storefronts, and ways of digitally onboarding them.
“During the Covid-19 pandemic era, most businesses had to adapt and go digital but faced a lot of challenges in doing so as many MSMEs didn’t know how to (go about it).
“From what they told us, we need to provide a holistic end-to-end solution to help the MSMEs digitalise their business. The merchants need a starting point, which we felt was from the consumer wallet, and then built use cases around it for merchants to benefit from.
“Our users have had a wallet for the longest time, and we are proud to be the first to bring a merchant wallet to the market to help business owners digitise their business operations,” he said.
