DOST, PayMaya Deal Boon for OneSTore Transactions

ONLINE-focused OneSTore.ph continues to make a headway in e-commerce. It has been aiming to make transactions easier and more convenient for everyone.

With the addition of PayMaya into its fold, a win-win situation is expected. PayMaya is a payment solution designed to make online purchases easier and more convenient, something that’s like tailor-made for OneSTore.

OneSTore is the e-commerce platform of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) for all DOST-assisted products.

Disbursement solution for convenient business

To realize the said goal for clients and mercants, the DOST signed up recently online payment solutions provider PayMaya to be its newest payment channel partner.

The partnership is expected to enhance OneSTore.ph’s online market platform to accept payments for credit, debit, and with a prepaid card or e-wallet like PayMaya.

With the partnership, PayMaya will provide end-to-end payment solutions for OneSTore through online store gateway checkout.

“PayMaya does the end-to-end acquiring service for DOST — we process the payment, we do fraud management, and we provide the resettlement solution for DOST,” said Ma. Rocielo B. Nunez, digital portfolio manager of PayMaya Business.

Another advantage of the PayMaya’s integration in OneSTore is that it makes it faster for merchants to receive settlement for their products — just a day after purchase. Currently, it takes about two months to disburse the sales from OneSTore to their over 500 merchants.

With PayMaya Checkout, settlement of payment for merchants can be shortened to next day after the transaction.

“What we are doing right now is we are providing them with a disbursement solution so that DOST can receive the settlement [for the transaction] and process the settlement for its merchants in real-time the next day so that they do no longer have to wait for two months,” added Nunez.

Launched in 2017 and developed together with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), OneSTore is the DOST’s marketing platform that helps micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) expand their market reach through presence in the digital space.

MOU. Officials of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and PayMasa seal their partnership with a handshake, formalizing the latter’s addition to the former’s OneSTore.ph e-commerce platform. DOST Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña (third from right) and PayMaya Founder and CEO Orlando B. Vea (third from left) signed a Memoradum of Understanding on August 13. Witnesses to the signing included (from left) Mar Lazaro, director and head of PayMaya Business, PayMaya President Shailesh Baidwan, DOST Undersecretary for Regional Operations Dr. Brenda L. Nazareth-Manzano, and DOST Region II Director Sancho A. Mabborang. (Photo: Henry A. de Leon, DOST-STII)

Products featured at OneStore are from MSMEs that were assisted by the DOST through its Small Enterprises Technology Upgrading Program or SETUP.

DOST Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña described SETUP’s objective.

“We have been helping micro, small, and medium enterprises to enable them to adopt technological improvements mainly by improving the technology that they use, by giving them access to new equipment, hardware, and software.

“This has significantly improved their productivity, remarkably expanded their market, grew their employment figures, and of course, increased their incomes,” said de la Peña.

The DOST chief further explained that even with well-established marketing platforms, the DOST has decided to put up its own e-commerce platform for the MSMEs that they have been assisting.

DOST, PayMaya partnership seen to grow

“Definitely, the payment system (PayMaya) will help a lot. It will help our clients — the merchants — and even the buyers do their purchases more conveniently,” he added.

PayMaya’s Founder and CEO Orlando B. Vea hailed the partnership with DOST and expressed hope that it will really enable DOST to bring technology to MSMEs.

“Being partners with DOST confers a certain validation on the technology that we offer. We think that we can enable not only government but the private sector in the payments processing space,” said Vea.

The PayMaya partnership also opens up other avenues for the two organizations to work together as PayMaya also offers to provide disbursement solutions for OneLab and OneSTore hubs.

OneLab is a digital platform for a network of laboratories to provide a referral system for convenient and easy access to laboratory testing and calibration services.

Meanwhile, OneSTore hubs are the physical stores for OneSTore.ph merchandise, which are currently located in 21 sites nationwide.

“For OneLab we are also offering payment gateway checkout and for OneSTore hubs we’re offering our POS (point-of-sale) terminals that are portable, Wi-Fi enabled, and have their own SIM cards for data,” explained Nunez. The arrangement enables OneSTore hubs to accept card payments instead of just cash.

Aside from that, Nunez added that PayMaya also wants to provide QR codes to OneSTore hubs so they can accept QR payments.A QR (Quick Response) code is a machine-readable code that can be read by the camera on a smart phone, while a QR payment is done by scanning a QR code from a mobile application.

Other areas for partnership between DOST and PayMaya is the possible application of PayMaya payment systems for the Hybrid Electric Train and for disbursing allowances to DOST scholars.

PayMaya now joins other third party solutions for OneStore.ph that include 2GO, AIR21, Shopinas.com, Landbank of the Philippines (LBP), Dragonpay, and BlackArrow.

The DOST and PayMaya signed their MOU on August 13, 2019 at the Launchpad Building in Mandaluyong City at same time launching their partnership. (DOST-STII)