Spenmo parent launches new brand after rocky 2023

Fintech firm Spenmo has had its fair share of peaks and valleys.

While the company’s parent firm, Digital Services SG Five, secured US$85 million in funding in January 2022, the year that followed was thorny. With sudden changes in the lineup of its C-suite executives, embezzlement rumors, and the closure of its Philippine business, the company has found itself in a tight spot.

But Jo-ann Chung, acting CEO and chief product officer of Spenmo, says in an exclusive interview with Tech in Asia that the team does not count itself out. Now, it’s ready to launch a fresh venture.

(From left) Summit executives Isaq Ahmed (CTO), Jo-Ann Chung (CEO), and Jim Goudie (CFO) / Photo credit: Summit

Called Summit, the new brand offers two products for clients, namely a vendor invoice management tool and an employee expense management solution.

Summit will be another name under Digital Services SG Five, marking a new multibrand approach for the company, Chung says. This means that Summit will be acting as if it were a separate entity from Spenmo, and the latter’s operations will not be affected.

Chung will serve as CEO of Summit, while Spenmo’s CTO Isaq Ahmed and CFO Jim Goudie will assume the same roles for the new brand.

In launching Summit, Spenmo is shifting its brand positioning, which could be difficult, as the company has become familiar as a solution to help businesses mainly manage payments. The change could indeed be jarring to its current user base, Chung concedes.

To differentiate itself, Summit is created to be more of a smart accounts payable workflow tool. This can complement Spenmo’s spend management software, which focuses on bill payments, corporate cards, reimbursements, and automated bookkeeping.

“We see the market Spenmo attracts and the market that Summit will attract being adjacent to each other,” Chung adds.

For now, Summit plans to start in Singapore and then expand to other markets in the Asia Pacific. Specifically, it aims to work with Singapore companies that also have operations across the region. “Our job is to help them manage more broadly across that base,” Chung says.

Digital Services SG Five has good reason to tap into the accounts payable market with Summit – Chung estimates a total addressable market of up to US$180 million in Singapore alone.

However, she acknowledges that the industry is already highly competitive. Most of the established players, though, tend to be fintech firms more centered around payments like Spenmo, so Summit could distinguish itself by delving deeper into processing.

Chung adds that while there are competitors that are also processing-centric, they mostly gravitate toward larger or mid-sized businesses. “So when you look at small businesses, they often feel that those solutions are unaffordable for the size of business that they are.”

A long and tiring climb