Background

Small businesses were hit the hardest With the inability to continue business during government mandated lockdown periods and the over-reliance on physical transactions, local businesses were hit particularly hard during COVID-19. Since Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) account for 99% of all business in Singapore, their recovery will be crucial to the recovery of Singapore’s economy. Accelerated preference for digital payments Since COVID, 70% of Singaporeans have increased online purchases and mobile shoppers have also increased from 41% pre-COVID to an astounding 93% during COVID. This shift was particularly profound on mobile – with the flourishing mobile shopping apps like Lazada and Shopee. Visa needed to help small businesses go online to survive We recognized that for small businesses – it was digitizing or perish. A fundamental tenet of going from bricks-to-clicks is acceptance of digital payments. That’s where we could help.