PARTNERSHIP is a vital aspect of business everywhere, maybe more so in the Philippines. It’s a lifeline for a “new kid” on the business bloc.
For the more established business organizations partnership is expansion, a reaching out to more and more customers. Of improving customer experience.
That’s — probably — what brought together financial technology (fintech) bigwigs GCash and Qwikwire.
Of course, GCash is positioned as the Philippines leading mobile wallet provider, which is owned by three titans in the country’s elite business community: Globe, Ant Financial, and Ayala Corp.
On the other hand, Qwikwire, from its humble beginnings as a startup in the fintech sector, has grown to be the Philippines’ largest cross-boarder payments platform and in Southeast Asia.
To realize their goals of innovating payments transactions process in the country concerning real estate, GCash and Qwikwire signed an agreement on December 6, 2018, at the Mynt Office in Taguig City, Metro Manila.
Present for the signing rites, it was learned from an email sent to SDN — Science and Digital News by Qwikwire, included Mynt’s Vice President of Merchant Solutions JM Auero and Online Acquisition Head Ferdie Perez, and Qwikwire CEO Ray Refundo, who was with his team.
Collectively, they officially launched their partnership, a deep dive into the fintech world.
Local Real Estate Payments
In the Philippines, where the real estate industry has been booming over the last 5 years, people still pay their real estate dues through the traditional Post-dated checks (PDCs), Bank Deposits, over the counter payments directly to property developers or some, to their brokers. Aside from these methods being time-consuming, fraud issues were also apparent as the current process is highly manual and lack security measures.
Qwikwire and GCash Facility
GCash is a BSP-regulated mobile money service that facilitates transactions using your smartphones. It’s like having your wallet inside your phone, giving you a hassle-free and a safer way to go cashless.
GCash and Qwikwire executives before they put ink to paper. (Image source: Qwikwire)
With GCash and Qwikwire’s mutual goal to innovate and make payments safe and secure, clients of property developers including that of DMCI, Century Properties, Double Dragon, Revolution Precrafted and more can now pay their association dues through GCash’ mobile app. This will be available for real estate payors based in the Philippines. Through this partnership, users can now easily pay their property dues in just a few clicks.
Transactions from Qwikwire’s clients will be handled and processed by GCash. For the first month, the facility is available only for association dues but is set to also handle reservation fees and payments for monthly amortization.
Qwikwire CEO Ray Refundo sees a bright future for the partnership.
“In the next 2-3 years, I firmly believe that there will be a significant change in how we do payments here in the Philippines. In the same way that most Filipinos skipped having a landline in their households and went straight to owning mobile phones, I think we can go from a society where most doesn’t have a bank account to turning their smartphones into a mobile wallet,” he said.
Paradigm shift
It can be recalled that it was only a year and five months ago when Qwikwire won the 5th Geeks on a Beach (GOAB) won GOAB’s startup competition held in Puerto Princesa City, Palawan.
On its way to being crowned champion, a highlight of the GOAB international startup conference, it Refundo’s group bested five other finalists.
From then on, Qwikwire has continued to solidify its standing in the volatile fintech field as a “secure international payments platform designed for enterprises.”
Its partnership with GCash can only expand its standing and reputation amidst a mushroom-like sprouting of online payments organizations.
Out there, it is not an easy world to live by for “new kids” on the bloc. Competition is, as they say, is cut-throat — like, “I cut your throat, you die.”
But the partnership between Qwikwire and GCash brings a whole new world, probably a paradigm shift in real estate payments process.
And that can only make life easy and better for the professionals — an everyone else for that matter — who have no time to go the banks to pay their condominium, or new house, dues.
A statement from Qwikwire after bagging the GOAB crown summed up its mission.
“We help enterprises in the Philippines to collect payments anywhere in the world. We give them two things: technology and the network.
“In technology, we provide customized solutions for real estate developers, BPOs (business process outsourcing), and banks to further enhance their accounting which other cross-border payments don’t do.”
Now, Qwikwire and GCash together, things can only look better, brighter ahead. (EKU)