Voyager Innovations, the digital innovations unit of the Philippines' PLDT and Smart, has agreed to purchase Singapore-based e-commerce platform start-up Paywhere.
Paywhere is the company behind online store creator TackThis!, a cloud-based e-commerce platform that operates on a software as a service (SaaS) model.
It enables entrepreneurs and businesses to set up their online store, showcase their products on various online platforms, manage their store inventory, and accept payments through a variety of local providers.
TackThis! also allows easy integration with social media sites like Facebook, as well as blog sites like Tumblr and Blogspot, or personal blogs. It has around 30,000 registered users across Southeast Asia where it is complemented by Takatack, an online shopping discovery platform.
Orlando B. Vea, president and CEO of Voyager Innovations, said the move is in line with the company’s thrust to build digital commerce business in the Philippines and other emerging markets.
“We want to reduce the complexities, the technological barriers, and the cost to deliver that comes with bringing a store online,” said Vea. “As more and more people are going online with increasing internet penetration, going into digital commerce is imperative for businesses. In other words, having an online store for businesses is not just about presence - it’s about empowerment.”
In emerging markets, Voyager said only 1% to 5% of SMEs have websites, and only a fraction of those would have transactional online stores. In the Philippines, there are one million registered SMEs, with only 1% of them having websites.
“As more and more people are going online with increasing Internet penetration, going into digital commerce is imperative for businesses. In other words, having an online store for businesses is not just about presence - it’s about empowerment,” Vea added.
Dickson Gregory, co-founder and CEO of Paywhere, said by joining Voyager the company would have more opportunities to onboard merchants onto the TackThis! platform.
“I look forward to seeing TackThis! scale internationally, much in the same way we’ve seen the platform help entrepreneurs grow their businesses,” he said.
Gregory founded Paywhere in Singapore together with COO Damian Chow and CTO Vincent Lau in 2010.