Category: Press
Kuala Lumpur, April 23rd, 2019 – Curlec is pleased to announce its partnership with HelloGold to help Malaysians save regularly and invest in gold through a Shariah compliant mobile application that helps investors buy, sell, send and redeem physical gold daily.
As part of its new SmartSaver™ program, HelloGold has integrated Curlec’s Direct Debit solution to automate their customers’ monthly investments, where in addition to increasing investment efficiency, customers get to set their desired savings goal to generate longer-term returns.
“The partnership with HelloGold is an affirmation of our ongoing commitment to revolutionise the way businesses and consumers approach financial services. The importance of having sufficient savings within a tough economic environment is a key driver as to why HelloGold with Curlec’s Direct Debit payment solution will help Malaysians to easily save gold via a secure and disciplined manner,” said Zac Liew, Co-founder and CEO of Curlec.
Within today’s challenging economic environment, Malaysians face rising prices in everyday essentials such as food, energy as well as healthcare. According to studies, 42 percent of Malaysian household savings is held in cash.
“With this new digital infrastructure, HelloGold will not only improve our savings product to customers, the partnership will also streamline payment processes with the direct connection into Curlec, allowing customers to easily set up and manage their direct debit payment amounts on the system,” explained Ridwan Abdullah, Co-founder of HelloGold.
To encourage more Malaysians to save in an inflation proof asset, the HelloGold mobile app lets customers buy physical gold from as little as RM1. This makes gold savings accessible and affordable to everyone anytime, anywhere.
For more information on the story, read the media coverage of Curlec and HelloGold in Fintech News Malaysia and Focus Malaysia.
Categories
Curlec on Startup Malaya
The Dredger TV recently featured us to kick start season 6 of Startup Malaya. This series was created to profile founders and their startup journeys. Founders Zac Liew & Steve Kucia sat down with Amin Rahman to have an insightful conversation on Curlec’s journey thus far and the recurring issues SMEs face.
See more interviews and press releases on Curlec here.
Learn more about Direct Debit in 3 minutes here.
See more interviews and press releases on Curlec here.
Learn more about Direct Debit in 3 minutes here.
Kuala Lumpur, 5 March 2019 – Curlec is pleased to announce the closing of its seed funding round led by Captii Ventures – a multi-stage investor known to back marketplaces, new media, fintech, agritech and enterprise applications, to further grow its Malaysian operations and take the online Direct Debit payments platform to the mass SME market.
“We’re delighted to have secured funding from Captii Ventures and are looking forward to bringing Direct Debit to the Malaysian SME market and beyond,” said Zac Liew, co-founder and CEO of Curlec.
Prior to Curlec, SME companies wishing to collect recurring payments have been forced to rely on manual methods such as cash and cheque, or expensive credit card processing. Whilst interbank Direct Debit has been around in Malaysia since 2010, it has historically been a paper-based system that only large corporates could access due to the heavily manual processes involved and custom-developed software needed to deal with individual banks.
Curlec now enables businesses of all sizes to access this payment mechanism that makes it easy for them to collect recurring payments and take control of their cash flow.
“Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, particularly with SME companies, and up until now collecting payments has been incredibly admin-heavy and expensive. SMEs have traditionally been underserved by banks, so we are stepping in to provide a simple solution that takes the pain out of collecting payments so they can focus on growing their business,” added Liew.
Since launching, Curlec has processed in excess of RM50 million worth of transactions and now serves companies such as CTOS, Funding Societies, HelloGold as well as a wide range of SMEs. Acting as an intermediary between a business and its consumers’ banks, the software built by the Curlec team replaces the old error prone method with an easy-to-use cloud based solution. This digital system greatly improves the experience of consumers and removes the need for businesses’ to staff large finance divisions which were necessary to keep up with the paperwork. It is a leapfrog for payment processes in the country as it solves a multitude of supply and demand issues.
“I believe that this new addition into Captii Venture’s portfolio will bring great value to the payments ecosystem, initially in Malaysia and later throughout Southeast Asia. There is a large opportunity in this space, as Direct Debit has traditionally been the hardest payment method for businesses and consumers to access prior to the introduction of Curlec. We have been tracking Curlec’s progress since as early as March 2018 and they have achieved significant milestones to date.” explained Ng Sai Kit, Chief Executive of Captii Ventures.
For more information on the story, read the media coverage of Curlec on Tech in Asia, The Business Times, e27 and Deal Street Asia.
Categories
Curlec Featured on Malaysia SME!
Kuala Lumpur, 25 February 2019 – Curlec was recently featured on Malaysia SME in the Striking section. Established in 2005, Malaysia SME is Malaysia’s first business newspaper focussing on SMEs, as well as issues surrounding SMEs.
Our co-founders, Zac Liew and Steve Kucia, sat down to give an extensive overview of the conception of Curlec, the history of direct debit in Malaysia and its tremendous growth over 2018.
To see Curlec in the news, click here!
Our co-founders, Zac Liew and Steve Kucia, sat down to give an extensive overview of the conception of Curlec, the history of direct debit in Malaysia and its tremendous growth over 2018.
To see Curlec in the news, click here!
Kuala Lumpur, 1 August 2018 – Curlec, the payments company simplifying online Direct Debit, is pleased to announce a partnership with Funding Societies, the first and largest peer-to-peer (P2P) financing platform in Malaysia.
Through this partnership, Funding Societies will become the first Malaysian P2P platform to adopt an online Direct Debit solution. Using Curlec’s integrated system, the repayment process for Funding Societies’ SME clients will be automated, thus increasing their customer efficiency and lowering processing times.
With this tie up, Funding Societies’ SME clients can now get rid of cheques and paperwork to process their repayments.
Until now, most repayment methods have been administratively intensive exercises that require sizeable teams to manage the process. Curlec’s Direct Debit solution saves costs and reduces operational complexity, resulting in local SMEs benefiting from a hassle-free customer experience when performing monthly repayments.
Zac Liew, Co-Founder and CEO of Curlec, stated that he was delighted to be working with Funding Societies.
“Going forward, Funding Societies will offer Curlec’s Direct Debit solution for SMEs as an additional repayment method, and our Instant Pay FPX payment gateway for investor deposits. It is a great opportunity to collaborate with another local FinTech company that is also committed to supporting SME businesses. Ultimately we share the same goal: to help SMEs currently underserved by existing financial institutions,” said Liew.
Wong Kah Meng, CEO of Funding Societies Malaysia, said that he was proud to be the first P2P financing platform to use an online Direct Debit system for their SME users.
“Curlec’s system offers an option to automate our SMEs repayments. With an efficient and practical process like this, we hope to enhance our customer experience. If they no longer need to process paperwork for every repayment, our users can focus more fully on developing their businesses,” explained Wong.
Funding Societies currently holds the largest domestic market share in terms of crowdfunded amount. The platform holds a 0% default rate – well over a year since it began operations.
“With Curlec’s automation technology, Funding Societies hopes to scale our business faster and more efficiently to achieve our goal of RM50 million in SME financing this year. We want to serve more and more of underserved SMEs who require financing,” added Wong.
For more on the story, read the media coverage on Curlec here and here.
About Curlec
Curlec is a FinTech company that makes it easy for businesses to collect recurring payments. It is a simple solution for collecting Direct Debit payments online, allowing businesses to be in control of when they get paid. Curlec facilitates transactions by intermediating between Buyers, Sellers and their Banks, making Direct Debit available to businesses of all sizes.
The company was founded in 2017 with the vision of providing the Direct Debit payment system to underserved SMEs. Curlec is the first independent software company in Malaysia to process online interbank Direct Debit transactions.
Click here for more information.
About Funding Societies
Launched in early 2017 in Malaysia, Funding Societies is the first and largest P2P financing platform in Malaysia. Funding Societies connects SMEs with investors through an online marketplace, thereby increasing access to financing for SMEs. By investing into SMEs, investors could earn risk-adjusted returns greater than fixed deposits, bonds, and other traditional investment instruments. Meanwhile, SMEs obtain access to short-term financing to expand their business through a fast and simple online process. Additionally, SMEs benefit from not having to provide collateral for financing, while interest costs are minimized due to short financing tenures.
Funding Societies has achieved numerous milestones in its short history, including USD 25 million in Series B funding led by Softbank Ventures Korea and supported by Sequoia India, Alpha JWC and Golden Gate Ventures. Funding Societies also has presence in Singapore and Indonesia (where it is known as Modalku), becoming one of the largest digital financing platforms in the Southeast Asian region. Through its searing growth, Funding Societies remains dedicated to the vision of supporting underserved SMEs and improving societies in Southeast Asia.
For more information about Funding Societies Malaysia, click here.
Kuala Lumpur, 26 June 2017 – Curlec is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Cheng & Co that will allow Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to tap into the previously hard to access Direct Debit system. With the recently signed MoU, Cheng & Co’s client base can now enjoy the benefits of Curlec’s ability to automate payment collections.
This partnership is the latest tie up that Cheng & Co have made with global and regional FinTech players, with the cloud-based accounting company, Xero, and P2P lenders, Funding Societies, examples of this.
Tom Wong, CEO of Cheng & Co stated that the partnership with Curlec would help their clients to “accelerate their business growth and opportunities”. In addition to the partnership, Cheng & Co’s associate company, Indah Secretarial, will become users of the Curlec system to help with their payment collections.
“Digital transformation is promising to deliver value to enterprises of all sizes. As businesses expand and grow, it is imperative for businesses to evolve and adapt to technology advances in order to keep pace with the changing global business landscape,” explained Wong.
Zac Liew, co-founder and CEO of Curlec, added that he was delighted to be working with Cheng & Co.
“Existing Direct Debit solutions have been a payment method that has been traditionally restricted to large corporates who have the resources to facilitate it. With Cheng & Co being one of the largest professional services firms in Malaysia, we now have the opportunity to bring this underutilised payment solution to the masses. I believe that this will be a formidable partnership and together we can offer a best in class solution to their customers,” said Liew.
This strategic partnership is in line with Curlec’s mission to make Direct Debit accessible to businesses of all sizes in Malaysia. If you would like to take full advantage of Curlec’s collaboration with Cheng & Co, please leave your contact details below.
