The PayPal Innovation Lab in Singapore is unlike any other laboratory you’re likely to visit. With a full-fledged bar on one end, complete with exposed pipes and incandescent light bulbs, one can be forgiven for mistaking it for a swanky co-working space or a pub that only PayPal employees are privy to.
Since 2016, a number of startups have graduated from the PayPal Innovation Lab, namely InvoiceInterchange, TenX, Axinan, Chynge, Jumper.ai, and PolicyPal. But like a well-oiled machine, more startups are coming down the pipeline. Tech In Asia was able to catch a glimpse of some of them at PayPal Innovation Lab’s Crawl event.
Opening the event yesterday was Jerry Tso, director of PayPal Innovation Lab’s Singapore Development Center.
More than just offering a space for startups to operate, he mentioned that PayPal also shares its expertise in myriad areas, from information security and fraud management to payment infrastructure and even digital marketing. “We run workshops to help businesses to set up online websites, incorporate online payment into their businesses, etc,” Tso explained.
The bar at PayPal’s Innovation Lab in Singapore / Photo credit: Will Chin
At present, three startups are undergoing PayPal Innovation Lab’s nine-month program. Even though they’re just halfway through their journey, the potential they offer is exciting to say the least.
Awan Tunai: making loans easy in Indonesia
According to Windy Natriavi, co-founder of Awan Tunai, just 40 percent of Indonesians have bank accounts, and more than 90 percent of merchants are micro-entrepreneurs. This presents a unique problem for the country, since it is difficult for shop owners to obtain working capital from banks, and equally challenging for customers to enjoy financing at the point of sale. Enter Awan Tunai, a supply chain financing solution that helps banks provide financing to the Indonesian mass market.
HitPay: simplifying omnichannel payments
HitPay enables one-tap payments for omnichannel businesses. For example, the company’s point-of-sale feature allows merchants to collect all modes of payments in over 30 currencies from a variety of channels, such as trade conferences, pop-up markets, and boutique retail stores – all without using a physical credit card terminal. On top of that, HitPay has an integrated social commerce feature that allows sellers on social media platforms to provide a mobile-native purchase experience to potential buyers.
Rate: the best exchange rates and deals – and then some
Singapore-based blockchain company Rate has two consumer-facing products at the moment. The first is RateX, a desktop browser extension that provides consumers with the best exchange rates for cross-border purchases and the latest discount codes for the top ecommerce platforms. The second is RateS, a mobile app for top online shopping deals from the likes of Amazon, Taobao, and Lazada.
There’s a backend element as well in the form of the Rate3 Tokenization Protocol. It is a legally compliant, interoperable, and scalable way for asset tokenization (the representation of physical assets as blockchain tokens) that helps enterprises maintain a single unified identity across different blockchains and services.
Security, security, and more security
During his presentation, Michael Champlin, PayPal’s innovation showcase manager at San Jose, California, emphasized the company’s commitment to security. “While most people know PayPal as a payment company, we see ourselves as a security company,” he stressed.
Champlin demonstrated that by showcasing the amount of PayPal transactions that happen around the world at any one time – a staggering 600 to 12,000 per second among 250 million consumers and 20 million merchants. “What’s behind every one of these [transactions]? Data. Lots and lots of data,” he said.
Michael Champlin, PayPal’s innovation showcase manager in California, demonstrating a prototype app that allows Netflix viewers to purchase items straight from the show that they are watching based on voice signatures. In this case, the item in the shopping cart is the denim jacket of Eleven, a character from the hit series Stranger Things. / Photo credit: Will Chin
Greater scheme of things
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