This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on May 26, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: Soft Space Sdn Bhd, a local fintech (financial technology) company, has raised US$5 million (RM21.35 million) from Japan’s e-commerce firm transcosmos inc to form a capital and business affiliation that will transform the digital payment industry for traditional businesses in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.

In a joint statement yesterday, Soft Space and transcosmos said the partnership introduces an omnichannel customer relationship management (CRM) solution that helps take clients’ digital engagements to a whole new level by delivering appealing advertisements and loyalty marketing programmes that can directly send tailored discount coupons to customers’ smartphones that leverage both offline and online data.

Merchants can also leverage the chatbot services within the solution to further engage their customers, they added.

Soft Space and transcosmos pointed to research by Frost & Sullivan which noted that Southeast Asia is one of the world’s fastest-growing regions for e-commerce revenues — estimated to exceed US$25 billion by 2020.

“We are elated at this new partnership. Adding Soft Space’s mobile payment solutions to our existing DEC (digital marketing, e-commerce and contact centre) solutions will further increase the value of our digital transformation services for our clients, especially in the Asean market where we cannot ignore consumers’ shopping behaviour in bricks-and-mortar stores,” said transcosmos president and chief operating officer Masataka Okuda.

“We seek to contribute to clients’ business expansion by offering our CRM services, capitalising on offline data, in addition to online data, through implementing mobile payment solutions offered by Soft Space, a company which has a dominant presence in the Asean region,” he added.

“Alibaba Group recently announced the launch of the world’s first Digital Free Trade Zone outside China in Malaysia. We believe that this would be a catalyst for the next wave of e-commerce growth,” said Soft Space chief strategy officer Chris Leong.

“As payment is [an] integral part of any commerce, this partnership will position both companies to be the leading players in the region to help businesses transform digitally in all aspect of the business, and to monetise the trend of e-commerce for bricks-and-mortar businesses in the region,” Leong added.

Soft Space is a pioneer digital payment company in Asean that provides innovative payment solutions, focusing on mobile payments that include its flagship mobile point-of-sales solution. transcosmos, meanwhile, provides a one-stop digital communication, omnichannel marketing and e-commerce solution with multiple customer engagement features integrated with transcosmos’ “DECode”, a unique data management platform service suite.