Beyond bill payments, AXS’ plans for the future include building a payment ecosystem

[SINGAPORE] Since its inception in 2000, AXS has been synonymous with its eponymous kiosks that facilitate online bill payments. Now, it wants to build on its digital capabilities and develop a payment ecosystem.

Already, the company has cut the number of kiosks it owns to 630, from almost 800 at its peak.

One reason for the reduction in the self-service kiosks is the rise of smartphones. The AXS m-Station mobile application allows customers to pay their bills on their smartphones.

Digital channels now account for about three-quarters of the total volume AXS handles.

Two years ago, AXS made another move – into motoring – with its AXS Drive app, through which users pay for all their driving needs, from electric-vehicle charging to fines and bills. The platform also lets drivers pay car park fees with their credit card instead of a cash card in the on-board unit.

This was a shake-up of sorts, and marked the company’s venture beyond bill payments, its chief executive officer Jeffrey Goh told The Business Times.

“It’s a pain point no one is addressing. AXS is a neutral platform, (and) we came in to really address this by talking to all the car park operators who provide the technology,” said Goh, who co-founded AXS.

The company’s largest shareholder is private equity firm Tower Capital Asia. DBS has a minority stake.

Talking to car park players such as Wilson Parking and Metro Parking, AXS developed the platform in about seven months. AXS Drive now has about 100 car parks as partners, including in shopping malls such as VivoCity and hospitals – Thomson Medical Centre, for instance – as well as sports complexes and office buildings.

Beyond borders and bills

AXS is now looking to build an alliance across Indonesia and Malaysia for cross-border bill payments.

This builds on earlier efforts with Chinese card network Union Pay, through which users in China could pay their bills in Singapore without the need for the AXS app. Instead, they can do so via Union Pay.

Tying up with partners in Indonesia and Malaysia is part of fulfilling the potential needs of a Singapore customer who might need to pay the bills for their properties in those countries, said Goh.

While AXS might be lagging behind in this space, it is looking to acquire companies to get it up to speed, especially in countries where payment licences are harder to get.

“So we bank on that, through partnerships, through mergers and acquisitions, and substantial stakes in some of those payment companies to get us there,” said Goh.

AXS is also branching out into becoming a payment gateway for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the launch of Checkout and PayCube.

Checkout is an online payment gateway for merchants to accept digital payments, while PayCube is a physical payment terminal.

PayCube comes in two variants: one as a terminal that supports PayNow QR payments with voice alerts for hawkers and small businesses; the other is an all-in-one point-of-sales terminal that accepts credit and debit cards and QR code payments.

This new offering is a move into a very crowded space of payment gateways, but AXS believes it has an edge, being a principal member of card networks such as Visa and Mastercard. This enables the company to route payments directly to Visa and Mastercard without having to go through an intermediary bank, cutting down on transaction fees.

“We are lowering the cost, even for SMEs. As we progress towards a more cashless society, we want to make sure that digital payments are affordable,” said Goh.

Moving beyond its usual domain of bill payments has led AXS to do a tech refresh to upgrade its financial accounting and inventory systems. Ultimately, it went with enterprise software provider SAP. The implementation of the system took about three months, which Eileen Chua, managing director for Singapore at SAP, described as a record breaker.

“I think three months is the fastest that I’ve personally seen in Singapore, but it’s typically been three to six months,” she said.

Ultimately, AXS wants to build an ecosystem together with others in the payment space. In launching PayCube, it wants to work with its partners as part of a larger ecosystem.

Goh is looking to bring together partners in the payment space – ranging from point-of-sales to inventory management providers – to build this ecosystem.

Connecting the PayCube terminals to these partners could unlock more opportunities for all parties, by providing a whole connected solution to businesses, rather than separate piecemeal parts of a system.

“It is to work together to create a solution to provide to – for example, a franchising type of business. You will see that Subway is one of them,” he said.