The digital partnership news was announced by ADB shortly after FlexM won the ‘ADB Pay: Digital Payments Challenge’ at the recently held ADB-AIM Hackathon 2019. The exciting 3-day hackathon held at the ADB head office in Manila from August 31- September 2, showcased top talent in new technologies and sustainable solutions. Facing tough competition from 700 participants across 30 countries, FlexM scored first place winning US$10,000 in prize money and a partnership with ADB to co-develop and launch ADB Pay.

The hackathon covered three challenges addressing ADB’s goals of sustainability, knowledge sharing and digitalising the workplace. FlexM’s innovative solution incorporated user friendly UI and UX customised to the needs of ADB. Playing to its natural strengths of deep knowledge of payments architecture, tech expertise, customer research and agile design methodology, FlexM emerged as winner both in the audience vote and judges’ selection. FlexM’s proposal covered not only an interoperable digital payments solution but a full enterprise package including merchant network, chatbot, data analytics and AI.

FlexM which was established in 2015 in Singapore by Rune W Nilsson and Naveed Weldon, has now expanded to 3 countries with its sizeable and diversified portfolio. In 2018, FlexM was selected by the Prime Minister’s office in Singapore to showcase its inclusive cross border payment solution in the ASEAN ministerial meeting and to present how FlexM provides the unbanked in ASEAN with an opportunity to be part of the payment ecosystem.

The partnership with ADB promises to be a synergistic one. Given FlexM’s rich retail experience in the underbanked and unbanked segments in ASEAN and experience in inclusive digital wallet and payment ecosystem, FlexM is poised to co-create a seamless customer journey that ties in with ADB’s strategy of digitalising employee payments and the workplace. In the broader perspective, FlexM’s vision of financial inclusion relates closely with ADB’s Strategy 2030, which seeks to add value through financing, advanced technologies, knowledge and partnerships through integrated solutions, guided by values of prosperity, resilience, inclusivity and sustainability.

Another key player in this venture is leading integrated cloud applications and infrastructure services company, Oracle. By integrating Oracle’s ERP cloud applications with the ADB Pay project, FlexM hopes to leverage this relationship to access Oracle’s marketplace and its 430,000 plus customer base. FlexM is also a participant in Oracle for Startups, the company’s global initiative to support entrepreneurship.

The FlexM and ADB partnership is momentous and timely for Singapore as well, given ADB’s recent announcement on June 28th, 2019 that it will be opening an ADB office in Singapore in the second half of this year.