KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) has selected Capbay, a multi-bank supply chain finance and peer-to-peer (P2P) platform as the first and only fintech selected for its vendor financing programme known as PERINTIS.
CapBay, operated by Bay Group Holdings Sdn Bhd, will provide fast and affordable access to supply chain finance solutions, bridging the cash flow gap for all levels and sizes of vendors throughout TM's supply chain, including its small and medium enterprise (SME) subcontractors.
"SMEs stand to benefit the most from this innovative programme as a large majority of TM's vast network of nationwide vendors are SMEs," TM chairman Tan Sri Mohd Bakke Salleh said at the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signing ceremony recently.
The MoU was signed by TM group chief executive officer Imri Mokhtar and CapBay chief executive officer Ang Xing Xian alongside other representatives from a panel of banks.
The signing ceremony was witnessed by Entrepreneur Development and Co-operatives minister Datuk Sri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar accompanied by Mohd Bakke.
"TM's PERINTIS programme is in line with the government's efforts to ensure that vendors can expand their job opportunities.
"As you are aware, SMEs are the backbone of the country's economy, accounting for two thirds of employment and almost 40 per cent of the economy.
"Therefore, it is important to ensure that they are able to face the challenges of the economic pressures plaguing us today", Wan Junaidi said.
With this latest initiative, CapBay's P2P investors can now expand and diversify their investment portfolio backed by government and large corporate receivables while earning
healthier returns.
CapBay differentiates itself by offering lower risk investment notes in a bid to enhance investor trust and confidence especially during these times of uncertainty
brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
"We are pleased to partner with TM and be part of PERINTIS, expanding our reach to underserved SMEs in the telecommunication sector that need flexible working capital to grow their business and build resilience against the impacts of Covid-19," said Ang.
"With TM's assistance in authenticating relationships and
transactions, vendor processing requests will be digitised end-to-end, making risk assessment, onboarding and transactional financing simpler and faster," he said.
Through its proprietary credit-decisioning model, CapBay is able to provide flexible and cost-effective financing to SMEs and at the same time contain credit risks with a good
track record of low financing losses, making it an overall safer alternative investment.
"With the recent Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) cuts, investors are worried that they will see lower returns on their investments and are looking for higher yielding investments that are relatively safe.
"At our core, we strive to offer P2P investors high quality investment notes that offer good yield and low financing loss risk. Investors can consider this as an alternative to fixed deposit savings," Ang said.
CapBay launched their P2P financing pilot programme in March 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic and has since achieved over RM20 million of financing over 150 notes while maintaining zero defaults and financing losses for their investors.