Soft Space raises $5M to advance digital payments in SEA

Soft Space, a Malayasian fintech company, has raised $5 million from transcosmos, a Japanese e-commerce firm, to form a capital and business affiliation that will transform the digital payment industry for traditional businesses in Malaysia and Southeast Asia. The duo made a joint statement yesterday that stated that the partnership introduces an omni-channel customer relationship management (CRM) solution. This can improve clients’ digital engagements by delivering appealing advertisements and loyalty marketing programmes that can directly send tailored discount coupons to customers’ smartphones, leveraging both offline and online data.

“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 Chris Leong, Chief Strategy Officer, Soft Space.

“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. Merchants can also leverage the chatbot services within the solution to further engage their customers. Masataka Okuda, President and Chief Operating Officer, transcosmos, believes that adding Soft Space’s mobile payment solutions to its existing DEC (digital marketing, e-commerce and contact centre) solutions will further increase the value of its digital transformation services for its clients. He noted that in the Asian market, consumers’ shopping behaviour in bricks-and-mortar stores cannot be ignored.

“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,” Okuda said.