KUALA LUMPUR: Homegrown fintech company Swipey Digital Services Sdn Bhd (Swipey) has emerged among the Top 10 in the Alpha Startups accelerator programme.
The win means Swipey will be participating in the final pitch session at Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM)'s flagship fintech event MyFintech Week.
In line with MyFintech Week 2022's theme of Advancing Digitalisation for Recovery, Sustainability and Inclusion, this year's Alpha Startups programme focuses on unearthing startups with the potential to disrupt the financial services scene and digitalise financial solutions for individuals and SMEs.
Swipey co-founder and chief executive officer, Kalyana Mohan Teagarajan, in a statement said that the company aims to help SMEs focus
on building their businesses by removing common pain points by digitalising SMEs' backend financial operations and optimising operating costs.
"On a wider scale, we want to build customer-centric digital banking services for Southeast Asia's underserved modern SMEs. As SME owners ourselves, we are all too familiar with the stress that comes with managing expenses, having experienced this pain point ourselves. The problem is not unsurmountable - a solution exists. We just need to present this solution in the most accessible way to SME owners who need it most," he said.
Swipey streamlines and simplifies a modern SME's digital business
needs on a single dashboard, providing enterprises with easy payment and expense management solutions, so business owners can concentrate on core business activities.
In a research done by the company, Swipey found that 94 per cent of SMEs prefer having a dedicated company payment card to manage business expenses with segregation, governance and controls. However, only eight per cent have access to a corporate card issued by a traditional financial institution.
"Swipey bridges this gap by issuing next generation corporate cards and offering centralised and transparent expense monitoring and management. This is just one example in our broader goal to help SMEs dispense with the headache of managing company finances using our digital platform, thus enabling them to concentrate on what really matters – growing their business," said Kalyana.
Kalyana co-founded Swipey in February 2021 with Rouvin Thiruchelvam, who is also Swipey's chief financial officer as a fintech startup with plans to build on corporate card and expense management solutions with
more sophisticated, holistic fintech offerings including keeping cross-border transaction costs under control with lower foreign exchange rates and fees for cross-border payments as well as using Software as a Service (SaaS) to provide easy-to-adapt cost-effective pricing models.