2C2P – Breaking the Online Payment Gateway Hegemony?

The online payment gateway sector has always been a tough nut to crack. It’s almost akin to the OS market of yore – dominated by huge players; better systems don’t necessarily equate to higher market share and the industry is bogged down by rampant bugs and the lurking danger of fraudulent activity. But as is the case with many technology companies based in the western hemisphere, Paypal – the dominant player in the market hasn’t quite figured out the elixir in the Asian market and the result is that many other dominant country-specific players have emerged in this region. China has Alipay, Malaysia has MOL and Singapore has eNETS.

SinaptIQ and 2C2P

2C2P, a startup under MDA’s iJam Scheme is now entering the Singapore space and has started with baby steps in the right direction by getting into partnership with UOB.

Aung Kway Moe, founder of 2C2P is an established entrepreneur in Thailand. He founded SinaptIQ in 2003 which expanded into three subsidaries of which one of them – Paysbuy was bought over for THB 85M by a Thailand Mobile operator, Total Access Communications (DTAC).

The other subsidaries of SinaptIQ – DCC and 2C2P focuses on different aspects of e-commerce. Dynamic currency converter (DCC), as the name suggests is a real-time application that gives users a choice of paying in Thai Baht or a foreign currency. Its transaction volume breached THB2.0b in Sept 2009 . 2C2P on the other hand focuses on providing Cybersource-esque services in Asia by mainly providing credit card processing, payment gateway solutions and dispute management services.

Established in 2007, 2C2P is a joint-venture between Douglas Abrams and Aung Kway Moe. When asked about why he chose Singapore as the destination to launch 2C2P, he mentioned that Singapore market is open to new transaction-based payment solutions and also sees larger access to funds here.

Singapore Payment Gateway market

In Singapore, the dominant players are Paypal, Worldpay and eNETS. eNETS – the homegrown payment gateway service co-owned by OCBC, DBS and UOB – allows payment through credit and debit cards. Though we are yet to see mass adoption of e-commerce by retailers in the SE-Asian region, Juniper Research estimates that the global transaction market will reach $587 billion by 2011, with much of the payment volume coming from Asia. Aung sees a tremendous opportunity to leverage here, and though he is expecting setbacks from the big players in this market, he is ready to launch 2C2P on a war footing.

Laurels

2C2P was a finalist in the Red Herring 100 Asia 2008 Awards for playing an “important role of technology in Asian economy and throughout the world.” They also won the “Nokia Calling All Innovators” competition in 2009.

Mobile payment solution

2C2P are also entering into the mobile payment market and they claim the solution “is like Square without the device” which to simply put, is like any other mobile solution in the market. Their mobile payment solution will be launched in Thailand on Feb 15th for which they have already acquired a partnership with Amway and they are hoping they can launch it in Singapore by the end of Q2 2010.

With a plethora of mobile payments solutions, e-commerce payment solutions and a variety of players in the value chain, it will definitely be an uphill task for 2C2P to break the mould. Though the solutions they provide are not path-breaking or revolutionary through any lens, it will definitely be great to see more players in this field.

Update: They are also listed as one of the finalists in the Red Herring 2009 Global Awards.

Introducing e27 echelon 2010

If you can’t view the video, click here

S@S Enterprise Series

What issues must I know before starting up a company?

What is intellectual property and how do I make sound financial projections?

How can I do marketing that is both cost effective and creative?

If you have any of these burning questions, get it answered at Start-Up@Singapore’s Enterprise Series I & II.

Enterprise Series I:

This session will focus on the foundations of starting a business, particularly in Singapore, and the opportunities that are available in terms of funding, mentorship and other forms of guidance and support. Workshops conducted will focus on business development in Singapore and intellectual property management. This event will leave the audience with a clearer picture of the local entrepreneurship scene, so they are better equipped to formulate their business idea in accordance with the regulations and pro-enterprise initiatives presented in Singapore.

Enterprise Series II:

Enterprise Series 2, will be touching on some hard skills that first-time entrepreneurs will need to succeed in the field. Topics such making sound financial projections, creative marketing and leveraging on social media for business development will be covered.

These events will be held at Geylang East Library on Jan 8th/9th. Register for the events at http://events.startup.org.sg/

Samsung Developer Night

In this era of burgeoning mobile platforms, most handset-makers are looking at developing their own. Samsung is no exception. They released their open platform called Bada which enables rich user experience in applications on Samsung mobile phones. If you are curious to find out how they differ from other mobile platforms, then you should attend Samsung Developer Night.

Held in conjunction with CES2010, It’s a networking opportunity for mobile developers and an informal session for Samsung to share more details on the company’s position on operating systems, its new Bada platform as well as plans for an Application Store in Singapore.

Samsung executives will be on-site to host you and discuss possible opportunities for collaboration. Here are the details for the event:

• Date: Friday, January 8 2010,
• Time:  7 – 9pm
• Venue: Velvet Underground @ Zouk, 17 Jiak Kim Street, Singapore 169420

For further enquiries, please contact Julia Wei / Janice Wee of Edelman at (65) 6347 2327 / 6347 2315 or Julia[dot] wei [at] edelman [dot] com / janice [dot] wee [at] edelman.com.

Neoteny unconference – How Epic Fail and Agile Development Can Change the World

If you asked me to pick the buzzword spoken most during this event, it would definitely have to be FAIL! However, the unconference was anything but that! This weekend, instead of lazing around and sleeping till afternoon, I decided to hurl myself and that too at 8 am to attend the first ever Neoteny event and boy, am glad I did since I had an absolutely awesome time there, to say the least. Neoteny Labs in collaboration with the powerhouse Ruby on Rails development house – Pivotal Labs is establishing center of best practices here in Singapore, where they will be providing training for startup entrepreneurs and developers on development techniques and helping them to create products.

Agile thoughts

The event was kick started with panel discussion on product process and software agility by Ian McFarland from Pivotal Labs, Diego Rodriguez from IDEO, Jay Dvivedi from Shinshei Bank and Elisabeth Hendrickson from Quality Tree Software. Agile Development unlike the normal SDLC, is a methodology based on collaboration, iteration and process adaptability. Pivotal labs and IDEO are strong proponents of this method and were advocating this to be adapted for most web-based startups. They shared interesting case studies of Youtube and Paypal who kept pivoting and evolving their system through this process and creating more value to their customers.

The discussion also led to how Agile development forces people to constantly build and not spend time talking about the various feature requests. These discussions on development methodologies also led to the usual complaint from many local entrepreneurs on how it’s hard to find good technical talent in Singapore, when Ian responded by saying that it’s not always about hiring smartest programmer but having a process to enable them to be better, which is exactly what Pivotal Labs aim to do.

Of Epic Fails  and chutzpah

With all the talk about agile development and how it led to a lot of success stories, the discussion naturally veered to what is Singapore lacking in terms of entrepreneurship? Eyal Gura from Israel had some interesting insights to share on why he thinks Singapore can be the third Silicon Valley (Israel being the second)

While Singapore and Israel share many similarities in terms of immigrant population, compulsory military service, small size of the country, there are also that many cultural differences. He mentioned how there was a rampant fear of losing face, no one questions authority and people here place high premium on politeness. But, most importantly what was needed for the entrepreneurs to succeed was “Chutzpah”. Chutzpah according to him helps lubricate the business process and he thinks Singapore is uniquely positioned to bring in global talent and also establish both early stage and growth equity discipline and to overcome the cultural challenges.

With all the talk about failing, one interesting speaker that managed to get all our attention was Johannes Grenfurthner who runs Monochrom – an art-technology-philosophy group in Vienna. With his stage presence and use of different yet interesting metaphors conveyed why it’s important to fail and had interesting points on why sometimes competition isn’t the right way to create something that people need. For more information on his talk, click here.

Diversity of crowd and talks

What I really enjoyed about the event was the amazing diversity of the crowd. People from different countries, culture and background were sharing their insights on diverse range of topics. On one hand you have Mitch Altman talking about making a one button device to switch off any TV in this world, and on the other hand you have 12 year old Max sharing his very valuable insights on what kids think about technology.

There was also the Mozilla Drumbeat challenge where people shared their idea on how to make the web better and explain open web in the most creative way. Preetam Rai who presented on reward management system for content won the challenge for the best idea category. Coleman Yee won in the category of explaining open web concept in the best way possible.

What this means to startups?

From this event, it was evident that there is an increasing emphasis on walking the talk a.k.a building products.  Joi Ito mentioned that he would be interested in investing in consumer internet Ruby on Rails startups, with about 50,000 users, that grows 20-30% month-on-month. With Pivotal labs setting up base in Singapore, it will enable a lot of creators to build products and take it to market and follow the process of agile development to continuously iterate.

With a set of quality mentors coming in to help the startups, an organization to enable better development process, and an incubator set up to fund these passionate people, looks like Singapore entrepreneurial eco-system is set to become more vibrant.

Image courtesy: http://thinkingandmaking.com/