In today’s interconnected world, environmental sustainability stands as a cornerstone for organisations striving to balance growth with responsible stewardship. Yet, many companies are overwhelmed by the challenge presented by this balancing act.

We recognise the challenges these companies face. This article delves into how Doxa can be a part of solving these challenges faced by many companies.

At Doxa, environmental sustainability isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a guiding principle ingrained in our operations. Leveraging digitalisation and data management, we streamline processes to minimise our environmental footprint. By embracing digital workflows, we reduce paper consumption and enhance efficiency, demonstrating our commitment to sustainability through action.

Doxa Connex is a platform that we offer to companies to practically put environmental sustainability into action and not just words.

A big part of environmental sustainability in the built environment sector is the Embodied Carbon calculation. In fact, governments around the world are pushing for this calculation and making it mandatory reporting to be effective as early as 2025, as evident in the EU Taxonomy. The complex calculation is even more daunting when you consider the amount of data and effort required to perform them effectively.

With Doxa Connex, working with Razer’s Restorify, we believe the best approach forward is by taking the life cycle approach towards measuring carbon footprint.

Also Read: 11 easy strategies that are important for every startup to succeed

Doxa Connex automates the calculations of Embodied Carbon, enabling real-time tracking and reporting of carbon emissions associated with purchased goods. When the procurer and suppliers key into the required datasets, Doxa Connex applies an activity-based approach to modelling what the emissions are like for our customers. Through such initiatives, we strive to set new benchmarks for environmental stewardship.

Our first use case will be within the construction industry. By using Doxa Connex for your procurement workflow, starting from purchase requests through goods receipts, embodied carbon calculation happens automatically and is allocated to the right categories under your organisation’s Scope 3 reporting standard.

With a measurable life-cycle approach, partners have a dependable platform to ensure quantifiable reporting instead of vague claims running into the risks of greenwashing.

Our solution is validated as we are an official partner with SGTraDex in its green and sustainable trade finance. With SGTraDex, Doxa Connex is able to push data seamlessly to all participating financial institutions.

We are seeking future independent audits for our solution and will be moving towards supporting a net zero vision for our built environment sector. By using the activity-based approach, we endeavour to encourage our partners to set ambitious goals and utilise dashboards to track progress transparently.  Sustainability is a collective movement requiring collaboration across stakeholders.

As such, we are working closely with multiple market leaders to not only provide a technological solution but also provide incentives in the area of green trade financing.

Through strategic alliances with financial institutions, we facilitate green financing and sustainable trade finance, fostering a culture of environmental stewardship beyond organisational boundaries.

In conclusion, Doxa hopes to be your preferred partner in the collective efforts of every company to make a move to net zero a success. It may be a chore for many, but we can help in making it less painful.

Let us help you and your companies in this journey to drive a positive impact on our world. We invite you to join us in this collective pursuit of a greener, more sustainable world.

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TWdecoman, a one-stop matching platform for interior designers and renovation companies in Taiwan, has completed a strategic investment round from Jan Cheng Lighting, the owner of LED lighting brand DANCELiGHT.

The capital will enable TWdecoman to expand its renovation matching business actively.

TWdecoman, a unit of Hong Kong-headquartered Decoman Group that entered Taiwan in 2022, helps homeowners find and match with the most suitable interior designers and renovation companies. It utilises AI and big data to “accurately analyse data through an algorithm, thereby matching up homeowners with the most suitable interior design or renovation companies”. In addition, it provides do-it-yourself (DIY) home repair courses.

Also Read: Bridging Taiwan and Southeast Asia through innovation and tech

Currently, TWdecoman provides services in Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung. It now plans to expand in Q2 this year and will launch in the Tainan area.

At the same time, its DIY home repair courses are currently available in five major counties/cities of Taiwan, attracting over 250 students monthly, totalling over 1,500 students.

Benny Liu, Founder of Decoman, said: “Over the past year or so, not only have we achieved results in online media and offline operations, but we have also made great efforts in our local AI system and database. Now we can further deepen our big data analytics through Jan Cheng Lighting’s expertise, years of rich experience and available relevant info of the Taiwan market, while embarking on the Tainan market through Jan Cheng Lighting’s strong business networks in the southern region. Consequently, both our groups can reach supply chain synergy, creating a more flexible and resilient ecosystem structure.”

Also Read: e27’s role in empowering Taiwan startups through the Vision Program

Decoman also operates in several markets, including Singapore and South Korea. It is actively preparing to expand its business to the Australian market.

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Brainfish, an AI-powered self-service customer support platform for businesses, has raised US$2.5 million in seed funding.

The latest round was led by Peak XV’s Surge, with participation from Macdoch Ventures, Black Sheep Capital, existing angel Justus Hammer (CEO MadPaws), and new angels.

This brings its total capital to US$3.3 million.

Brainfish will use the new funds to double down on product innovation and accelerate international expansion.

Also Read: From chatbots to therapists: How AI breaks ground in bridging the mental health care divide

For online businesses today, customer service is based on the premise of helping people understand how a product works. Customers do not want to sift through numerous help articles or go through a chatbot workflow just to get through to a human to answer their questions. They just want their question answered instantly.

Brainfish is an AI product expert who helps customers understand a product and helps businesses understand their customers. The Brainfish AI search function combines a company’s knowledge documents and contextual understanding of the user to deliver instant, real-time answers that are personalised to the specific customer scenario.

“Customer support has not changed much in decades. The tooling might be better today, but primarily people want to speak to a human when they have a problem because human support is armed with institutional knowledge of a product. We’re turning this on its head at Brainfish. We aggregate complex data to create one digital source of truth, eliminating 90 per cent of the need for humans to support and interact with the customer and saving companies countless hours,” said Daniel Kimber, CEO and Co-founder of Brainfish.

AI has emerged as a transformative force in the customer service market and is poised to reach US$7.08 billion by 2030. Businesses have begun to leverage machine learning and automation to streamline customer interactions, optimise efficiency, and develop personalised experiences to revolutionise customer experience (CX) for the future.

Also Read: Microsoft to empower 2.5M Southeast Asians with AI skills by 2025

While businesses are predominantly using AI for customer support, it has yet to trigger a significant decline in the number of human agents required2. Brainfish addresses this issue by deflecting queries from a human interaction altogether and has recorded the highest deflection rate of any AI self-service solution on the market.

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ASEAN countries have consistently achieved high economic growth rates, which are attributed to careful macroeconomic strategies, relatively open trade and investment policies, and access to export markets in developed nations.

A key driver of the ASEAN economies is the manufacturing supply chains. From 2015 through 2019, manufacturing exports from ASEAN’s ten member states averaged five per cent annual growth—outpacing the global average of three per cent.

As governments across the world implement ESG and reporting regulations, businesses and manufacturers in ASEAN are faced with increased urgency and pressure to adopt sustainable practices to maintain competitiveness in the global supply chains. More than that, there are significant opportunities to extend its capabilities in manufacturing and establish competitiveness in green manufacturing.

The rise of ESG regulations and sustainable procurement in ASEAN and beyond

Globally, regulatory frameworks have evolved rapidly, led by the European Union with parallel initiatives in Asia.

Under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), exports to Europe will be subjected to carbon tax on their emissions starting in 2026, posing major trickle-down effects for ASEAN businesses by affecting export competitiveness.

The release of the International Financial Reporting Standards’ (IFRS) inaugural ISSB standards in June 2023 has also placed renewed attention on the ASEAN ESG regulatory landscape. Many ASEAN governments have started taking a phased adoption approach in incorporating new global sustainability reporting standards, with Scope three emissions reporting due to become mandatory under regulatory standards from 2025 onwards. Reporting is also no longer confined to just publicly listed companies but also non-listed and smaller companies.

Also Read: The future of finance: ESG integration in tokenised funding

Digital tools needed to accelerate corporate sustainability

Today, sustainability reporting, especially for businesses with extensive supply chain activities, involves the demanding and manual process of collecting data from various sources such as SMEs, suppliers, clients, and other stakeholders within the supply chain.

In the ASEAN context, where SMEs dominate the market and supply chains, accounting for 98 per cent of existing businesses, this challenge is particularly pronounced. SMEs face difficulties in commencing their corporate sustainability and sustainability reporting journey efficiently, mainly attributed to the absence of streamlined digital processes, sufficient resources, and requisite expertise.

As such, a gap has emerged in ASEAN between the growing data needs for comprehensive ESG reporting and the actual availability of such data in SMEs and entities in their supply chain, presenting a challenge around compliance.

Embracing supply chain transparency for green manufacturing

While local reporting is not yet mandated across most ASEAN countries as of 2024, foreign corporates and MNCs, which ASEAN manufacturers serve, are increasingly adopting sustainable procurement, causing major trickle-down effects on ASEAN businesses.

There is a need for ASEAN businesses to prove their green-ness in order to set themselves up for greater business and investments opportunities.

This is where ESG tech and digital solutions come in to play a key role in empowering ASEAN businesses and manufacturers towards corporate sustainability and ESG compliance.

Digital solutions like ESGpedia play a pivotal role in helping to facilitate easier and more robust self-serve reporting for ASEAN companies, with subsequent third-party assurance and certification. They help support efforts to navigate the evolving ESG regulatory landscape by digitalising country-specific and international reporting frameworks (e.g. ISSB, TCFD, GRI, etc.) for a streamlined and guided way for businesses, especially those with limited resources and expertise, to easily access and input. This is particularly beneficial in times when regulations are becoming increasingly complex and soon to be mandatory.

Third-party assurance and certification can also be digitally facilitated by technology. This is important as they offer credibility and recognition to companies so that they can effectively prove their sustainability commitment to global MNCs and stakeholders, mitigating the risk of greenwashing. For instance, an ISO14064 aligned report produced under the renowned ISO standard serves to recognise company’s commitment towards establishing, validating, and reporting its GHG emissions in accordance with international standards.

Establishing Scope three GHG metrics with full value chain calculations​ is a fundamental step for the ASEAN manufacturing sector to embark on sustainability. However, Scope three GHG calculation is typically a time-consuming and complex process, requiring great ESG expertise and manual data collection from each supplier.

Also Read: 6 reasons why startups should invest in sustainability

To lower the barriers to this seemingly massive ESG challenge, businesses and manufacturers in ASEAN can leverage technology solutions to digitally streamline the end-to-end process, from data collection to mapping both the value chain and product lifecycle, accurately calculating the company’s Scope three emissions in accordance with industry methodologies, and to take actions to actively engage suppliers in order to drive compliance with regulations across the entire supply chain.

Government support to facilitate doing well while doing good

It is no doubt that sustainability equates to profitability in the long run. It is time for ASEAN countries to extend their focus and capabilities from manufacturing to green manufacturing to maintain competitiveness in the global market.

ASEAN countries can benefit by engaging in cross-border collaboration to build their green economy and workforce. For instance, the Singapore government’s Budget 2024 covered a tiered support approach for businesses on their digitalisation roadmap, particularly focusing on financial support for training and digital adoption as well as digital technologies such as AI. This is something that the other ASEAN governments can consider emulating in order to advance ESG initiatives across the region.

Governments across ASEAN can also consider introducing a standardised set of guidelines in relation to ESG disclosures to help companies future-proof against upcoming mandatory sustainability reporting to be implemented in 2025. Relevant examples already implemented in the region include the Simplified ESG Disclosure Guide (SEDG) Adopter Programme in Malaysia, as well as the Sustainability Report (SuRe) Form in the Philippines.

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Dilip Krishnan steps into the role of President & CEO at Vatic AI, succeeding Arthur Becker, who transitions to Executive Chairman.

Krishnan, who is based in Singapore, will also join the board of directors. With over 16 years of experience in Digital Innovation and Corporate Strategy, Krishnan brings a wealth of expertise. His responsibilities will encompass overseeing Vatic AI’s global expansion into new markets, managing mergers and acquisitions, and spearheading the development of new AI products, mainly focusing on predicting creditworthiness within anonymous online audiences.

Having previously served as the Global Lead for Digital Transformation at Mastercard Data & Services, Krishnan boasts a proven track record in driving growth and innovation. His background includes stints at esteemed financial institutions such as OCBC Bank, Citi, and HDFC Bank, where he played pivotal roles in designing and executing transformative strategies and fostering fintech partnerships. Moreover, Krishnan’s involvement as a mentor with Enterprise Singapore and SMU Institute of Innovation & Entrepreneurship underscores his commitment to nurturing the startup ecosystem across the region.

Under Krishnan’s leadership, Vatic AI aims to leverage its Qscore product, which uses AI to predict the credit qualifications of anonymous online audiences.

“In the longer term, we envision being the audience intelligence platform of choice across industries, helping to strengthen credit access by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI),” he says in an email to e27.

Also Read: Artificial intelligence and the art of building presentations

By harnessing proprietary algorithms, the company seeks to optimise advertising expenditures at the Top of the Funnel while simultaneously driving down customer acquisition and processing costs for the finance industry. With Krishnan’s vision and experience at the helm, Vatic AI is poised for strategic growth and continued innovation in artificial intelligence and financial services.

“We saw that traditional digital advertising platforms use broad keyword categories for audiences, which can lead to irrelevant targeting. With more precise keyword categories, we can create more value to the online experience for both brands and consumers. Combining this with our data refreshes happening every hour, instead of DSP data normally 30 days or more old for audience categories, we can be the most relevant and reach the most in-market users,” Krishnan explains.

Regarding its Qscore product, he says, “We have developed our Qscore product for the finance industry, which uses AI to predict the creditworthiness of our audiences based on multiple factors, indicating the individual user would be qualified financially for a wide range of products. This AI technology allows brands to optimise their top-of-funnel advertising and only advertise to the audiences qualified for their products, massively reducing customer acquisition costs.”

This is why the financial services industry will be the company’s focus today.

“We are actively engaging in acquiring digital banks and lenders as key clients, using our marketing efforts to show our AI’s value and solve their issues of unqualified leads, high decline rates, and ad waste. We are working on strategies in key growth markets in Asia Pacific where we can solve these issues,” Krishnan says.

Also Read: These Artificial Intelligence startups are proving to be industry game-changers

Vatic AI has raised funding from investors such as Jenny Johnson (President & CEO of Franklin Templeton) and Arthur Becker.

The company said that it currently works with around 300 paying clients.

“Our inception was over five years ago, when we built a team offering managed services for our core AfterSearch technology. We used keyword targeting for our clients to improve their results in display advertising. Post that, we’ve scaled substantially with our executive team based in Singapore and improved our product development and focus to become a data tech SaaS company.”

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Image Credit: Vatic AI

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In addition to running their businesses, startup founders have another important responsibility to take: To stay in tip-top condition throughout the day. They are expected to be in 100 per cent condition all the time; not only for the business that they are running but also to set up an example for their team members. It is also known that a productive day begins with a good morning routine that is able to improve one’s mood and organise their activities.

DailySocial sits down with several Indonesia-based startup founders –Fabelio, Gadjian, e-Fishery– to learn about their go-to productivity hacks. Hopefully, this can serve as a reference for those who are struggling with time management.

The first tip comes from Christian Sutardi, one of the co-founders of Fabelio, who happen to have a unique morning routine. He wakes up after seven hours of quality sleep –without the help of alarm clock. The founder then proceeds to check the company’s performance report from the previous day while enjoying a glass of sugarless iced americano. He also responds to incoming messages according to their priority.

“Then I moved to the living room, have a glass of water, and check the news headlines of the day. Usually, I would read international news on Bloomberg. I start with international politics, COVID-19 updates, the stock market, and any other news that Google recommends. My news preference includes furniture industry, startups, stock market, football, and other sports,” Sutardi elaborates.

Sutardi officially begins his office hour at 8.30 AM. To maintain his productivity, he implements a framework known as “eat the frog first” or to start with the most urgent tasks (the “frogs”). The framework demands users to start with just one of the most pressing task as the first thing to do in the morning. The task does not have to be finished in one go; users are allowed to continue the next day.

Also Read: SEA tech founders playbook: A to Z of becoming a fundraising legend (Part 1)

The next tip comes from Afia Fitriati, CEO of Fast8 Group, the company behind the Gadjian, Hadirr, and Benefide platforms. For Fitriati, getting enough sleep is crucial in maintaining productivity. By getting enough sleep, according to her, the brain will be able to take a moment to recuperate after a long day at work. I will also be able to gain clarity in thoughts.

“There will never be enough time for everything, so it is very important for founders, or anyone in the startup ecosystem, to be able to prioritise. If you are doing it wrongly, you risk wasting precious time that you can never get back, doing insignificant activities. So, my advice is to always ask yourself every day: Do the things that I am doing today matter or not?” Fitriati points out.

The last tip comes from Gibran Huzaifah, CEO and Founder of eFishery, who considers himself as a morning person just like the other two founders. He prefers to use the morning to exercise, plan his day, and learn new things.

“The morning hours are the brightest, most exciting time of the day, that is why I always start with activities that make me feel pumped: Exercise, planning the day. The exercise can include a jog around the house or a seven-minute workout. It helps to improve energy and maintain mental health,” he explains.

“Then I spare a slot to learn or read. If I don’t get to read, I’m going to take an online course on Udemy. On Saturdays and Sundays, I like to spare four hours for learning activities like this, in the morning and evening. With this learning slot, whenever there is a new task or role to take, we can hit the ground running because we always spare the time to learn,” he continues.

Huzaifah also believes that every urgent or impactful task need to be done in the morning, such as strategic thinking or planning, followed by an internal update and problem-solving. If there is a key project or metric that he has been delegating, he is going to spend time in the afternoon to work on something meaningful for the project.

Also Read: 5 productivity hacks for successful people

“The other crucial moment happens in the evening after family time, once the children are asleep when I would review the agenda of the day. Which one goes well, which one doesn’t. It usually involves a simple question: What do I need to do to be five to 10 per cent better than now? Especially on Sundays, I have one more sheet to track my time management. It becomes a base for my improvement plan next week,” he continues.

All three sources agree on the importance of time management. For Huzaifah, having a good system will enable founders to manage their mind, energy, and time. This includes building a good daily routine, complemented with constant evaluation.

“A great part of our life is spent doing things related to work. By becoming more productive, we can do more in a much shorter time. This will enable us to allocate more to other parts of our life, maximise our potentials as a human being, and contribute as much as possible,” Huzaifah closes.

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This article was written by Prayogo Ryza in Bahasa Indonesia for DailySocial. English translation and editing by e27.

Image Credit: Tim Foster on Unsplash

This article was first published on October 26, 2020

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“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.”

If you are reading this then you no doubt also have a sense of urgency as we observe and digest what is happening to our climate and planet.

The inevitable question then becomes, “How can we collectively work together to make a difference?”.

To further break this down, we must include Southeast Asia (and its cities) in the solution.

Why? Consider these immutable drivers:

• It is the region with the highest growth globally in terms of population and city growth.
• The demographic bulge is around a very young population (compared to ageing regions such as North Asia, Europe or North America).
• It adds the equivalent of a New York City every six weeks in new urban sprawl.
• Cities account for 75 per cent of global CO2 emissions (but are only three per cent of total land mass).

If we don’t get Southeast Asia “right,” then our global environmental issue can’t be demonstrably solved or improved.

With Southeast Asia so critical, what models or precedents can we observe and potentially adopt to accelerate sustainability and green tech?

Also Read: Growing and transforming global green techs for sustainability

Consider how software evolved in only the last few decades.  It is not only the overwhelming majority of capital spend and investment for businesses but also ubiquitous and integral to our personal lives and our consumption of both services and products.

But it was only a couple of decades ago that software was in monolithic (say ERP) isolated stacks.  It was only specific IT members with deep domain expertise who understood the tech and its usage.

This looks very similar to today’s green tech solutions. It’s difficult to understand areas such as “carbon footprint and management”, “waste to fuel”, or “hydrogen power”. What are the categories around these that are relevant for my business or as an employee? How and where should I start? Am I making the right decisions on the tech, and how do I create an overall integrated architecture that makes sense?

Software presents a very compelling example and set of learnings in this regard.

Firstly, software and its impact and relevance were continually and simply explained to us. We were “conditioned” around “what problem it solves”. From this problem, we then began to understand this new category. This is a critical step in adoption because we think in categories.

A simple example of this is our neighbourhood supermarket. It is not organised alphabetically (or pictograms, etc.). It is in categories. And if we were to jump into a time machine and go back to our supermarket 20 years ago, many of today’s categories (“vegan”; “non-gluten”; “energy drinks”) wouldn’t exist.

If we take that same time machine to 20 years in the future, we will see many new categories that we never thought of, that we never thought we needed! This is because we have been conditioned (and explained to) around why the categories (based on a problem) are relevant to us.

Switching back to software, we see how clear categories evolved. In fact, an entire industry (tech analysts such as Gartner, Forrester, and IDC) was formed to tell us what those categories are and who the respective leaders are in each of them.

This meant that both IT and the business functions could talk about “architecture”. What key problems are we targeting, and how will we architect and combine the categories of software needed?

Also Read: Unlocking green fintech prosperity in Asia: Navigating the top 4 challenges

This is in an ecosystem where solutions can be integrated and interoperate with each other (and “system integrators” are another whole industry based on this).

We  are clearly not “there” yet with sustainability and green tech:

• The solutions are still very difficult to understand for a broad set of internal employees or external users. They are thus not clear “categories” yet.
• They are largely stand-alone and do not easily integrate into a multi-component ecosystem.
• From a business or individual standpoint, it is difficult to see why I would adopt and benefit from this solution.
• ESG, while at least a broad-based framework, is open to interpretation with a convoluted set of components (such as diversity and inclusion).

For green tech startups and innovators to flourish and become as ubiquitous as software, they must “condition” and explain to us the core problem being solved and why it is relevant to us.  This is a “point of view” rather than the product and its tech specs. Within this POV, tell us what this new category is.

And a category cannot exist as one company.  There has to be an ecosystem of partners, channels, regulatory agencies, APIs, data flows (the list goes on).

For real change and impact in Southeast Asia and its urban growth, we must move from isolated products and tech to clear categories and their surrounding ecosystems.  This is a massive opportunity for green tech startups and innovators to seize category and market leadership.

The critical context and impact of Southeast Asia in climate and sustainability around this has never been greater.

As business leaders, investors and advisors, we must encourage green tech startups and guide them on how to elevate their category strategy and the accompanying ecosystem mapping and execution.

It’s about designing the future and not just following! Carpe Diem, Let’s go make a difference!

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Talino Venture Studios, a global venture studio for sustainable innovation, and Chemonics International, a sustainable development firm, have launched and invested in Philippine fintech startup Higala.

An inclusive instant payment system (IIPS), Higala connects thrift banks, rural banks, and microfinance institutions currently excluded from payment networks because of high switching and on-ramp costs.

Also Read: Talino Venture Studios lands US$5M to bridge financial inclusion in emerging markets

Despite 400 rural banks in the Philippines, only 18 are part of InstaPay because of the lack of interoperability among them. As a result, the full potential of financial inclusion remains largely untapped, depriving many Filipinos of the benefits modern banking technologies can offer.

Higala promotes inclusion by lowering the cost of real-time payments, helping financial institutions price their instant payments reasonably. It also aims to provide inclusive financial solutions to the underbanked and rapidly enable merchants to accept digital payments.

The fintech startup is also building a core instant payment technology that can accommodate financial institutions of all sizes and turn banks into digital banks through white-label app services.

Higala leverages the open payment platform of the nonprofit Mojaloop Foundation. With Mojaloop’s open payment framework, Higala facilitates connectivity among various financial entities, including banks, institutions, payment gateways, merchants, and the central bank. This approach enhances affordability and accessibility in financial transactions.

“Higala will help modernise our country’s digital financial infrastructures and enable the participation of financial institutions through our network. Our goal is to make banking more inclusive, especially to the underserved segments of the population that have limited access to traditional banking services,” Higala President and CEO Vice Catudio said.

Also Read: Philippine startups raised US$956M in 2023 amidst funding winter

“Through Higala’s open payment platform and suite of solutions, we will enable new market players to aggressively develop and market innovative payment services to both consumers and merchants. This includes integrating solutions such as regulatory technologies like e-KYC and AML-TF monitoring, AI-based risk detection and management, banking microledgers, payment hub that will enable instant fund transfer across participating banks, and a global transaction gateway for remittance,” he added.

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